Ain't No Mercy In My Smile
by plumbobjo
Summary: The UK isn't big enough for him and his Steven anymore; they're too well known, there's not enough space to get lost in. America is perfect for them - nothing but miles of open road, anonymous towns, faceless people who don't look at them twice and if they do… well, Brendan makes sure they don't look a third time. VERY DARK kind of AU. Very hard M. Lots of warnings inside. WIP.
1. SOUTH DAKOTA

**Notes:** Okay, so some of you might have already read this first chapter on Tumblr. I wrote it as a kind of AU/very dark oneshot and then decided to turn it into a fully-fledged, full-length story. General premise is Stendan in America **unapologetically** committing crime, having lots of crazy sex and being hunted by the law. It's Ste and Brendan as we know them from the show embracing the darkest parts of themselves and blazing a burning, bloody trail across an entire continent. Their backstories/families/personalities are the same/very similar to canon, they're just a lot more insane and they got bored of being insane in good-ole-Blighty.

Fic title and lyrics from _Fire In The Blood/Snake Song by The Bootleggers ft. Emmylou Harris_. This song is amazing and epic - I implore you to give it a listen.

**Edit** - Brand new fic cover is art by the amazing teiubesc8 over on Tumblr (can't post urls). I will never stop going on about how incredible she is! You should definitely go and take a look at her stuff.

**Warnings (might spoil but worth reading, list will be updated as necessary):** Indiscriminate murder and violence. Blood and intense gore. General psychopathic behaviour. Allusions to past child abuse both physical and sexual. Extensive weapons usage. Homophobia/homophobic language.

I won't be posting chapter by chapter warnings - it would take too long. Just assume that _every _chapter contains one of/all of the above things. Feel free to let me know if you think I've missed anything.

Word Count ~ 1000

* * *

_come stand with me, my darling one,  
among the trembling pines.  
we feel his presence all around  
fire in the sky. _

**SOUTH DAKOTA  
**

The sun beats across the back of his neck like a shaken out blanket. The road stretches out ahead. Behind. Miles and miles of hot, melting tarmac to eat up with their stolen wheels. Brendan picks them, has a thing about black and leather and classic, American muscle, and Steven takes care of them, quick, nimble hands working at locks and wires until they purr.

He stands against this one, a black '67 Chevy Impala this time, 1965 Pontiac GTO before that but he thinks this new one's his favourite, and smokes the dwindling tab between his fingers. He's outwardly calm but he's waiting and he's a patient man but not when it comes to things that belong to him. Steven's been more than five minutes and his hands are getting itchy, warm steel pressing against his hip urgently with a life of its own.

He makes a move to straighten himself out but the clear doors of the garage, gas station, whatever, slide open and he relaxes again. Steven, casual as you like, strolling the good fifty yards back towards him with a lollipop stick poking out from between plush lips, walking beside the line of shimmering oil that swirls and winds its way to where Brendan stands watching. When he gets close he flicks his eyes down, mouth twitching at the corner.

"You done?" Brendan asks.

Steven smiles at him slowly, reaches back and pulls something out of his back pocket. A flat, flask-shaped bottle filled with amber liquid. Kilbeggan. Eighteen years on her. "Got you something."

"Mmmhh," he hums, low in his throat, takes the bottle and there's blood on Steven's thumb and wrist. "What did you do?"

Steven shrugs with one shoulder, crunches the candy in his teeth and tosses the stick aside. "He's only unconscious and he had a gun - I didn't start it. You've got it covered, anyway." He's talking about the slick, rainbow trail that ends a couple of feet behind them.

"_That_ was precaution," Brendan drawls but there's no accusation behind his words. He knows his Steven and Steven knows him. Brendan loves destruction as much as Steven loves blood and freedom and things that aren't his.

Besides, someone pulled a gun on his boy and Brendan won't let that slide.

"You always think of everything," Steven says sweetly but it's coy, teasing, and Brendan curls his fingers lazily into the front of his t-shirt and drags him close.

Steven comes, loose and instantly yielding, melting against Brendan like heated glass, just like every time. He slides his hands underneath Brendan's shirt and presses his palms flat against the sweat-damp skin of his lower back, turns his face into Brendan's throat and drags his sticky-sweet lips back and forth.

Brendan feels a shiver go through Steven's body and pass into his own and he waits, knows it's coming and lets anticipation sizzle along his veins, savours the thrill under his skin. Steven's breath quickens against his fluttering pulse and Brendan feels him inhale deeply, feels the words against his skin as much as he hears them, _burn it._

He brings the cigarette to his lips one last time, drags the smoke deep and holds it in his lungs. His head goes light and the sun blooms over the dingy, washed-out building in front of his eyes like lens flare. He blows upwards, stream of white through his pursed lips, flicks his finger and thumb like he's flipping a coin and Steven ducks and presses a single kiss to the cross hanging against Brendan's chest before he turns his head back over his shoulder to see, hair tickling against Brendan's chin.

The white tab spins, slow motion fall, trail of orange burning a tail like a comet, and it lands, bounces once and lands again. There's a noise like a ragged exhale and Brendan's lost in licking flames, erupting upwards and then moving, quick and smooth like running water, along the path he's lovingly laid for it to follow.

They watch, pressed together, and when the tanks catch and the metal twists and cracks with pressure, loud enough to hear from the spot Brendan's chosen to admire the view from, far enough to avoid injury but close enough to feel the initial, cleansing blast of heat, Brendan digs his fingernails into Steven's warm and pliant flesh.

A sound like eruption, like a natural disaster, low and rumbling and bone-deep. A stunning vista of climbing yellow and orange and rolling, pluming, grey smoke. Steven's gaze is rapt and he's rooted, still and in awe like this is the first time, like he is _every _time, and Brendan tears his eyes from the view because there's only one thing he loves doing more than watching something burn and it's watching the flames dance in Steven's wide, blue eyes.

*/*/*

_" - one victim, thirty-three year old father of two, George Jones - trail of similar fires spanning the I-90 across several states - examining nearby CCTV footage - two potential witnesses - "_

_"Witnesses," Steven scoffs, leaning against the bathroom doorframe, naked and dripping wet from the shower. _

_Brandon, South Dakota. Cuddled up against the state line. Brendan can have them over it and in Minnesota in an hour, tops. _

_" - took local fire-fighters six hours to put out the flames - "_

_"Might be your best yet, that." Steven's smiling, eyes flicking between the bed and the TV, between Brendan sprawled back on his elbows against the covers and the news footage of their scorching path of destruction. _

_"You know me, Steven. Relentless pursuit of the best," he drawls, drags his gaze over the inches of bare, damp skin. "Want me to make the next one bigger for you?"_

_Steven's eyes flutter and go dark and he moves off the frame, comes close and climbs into a slow crawl across the bed. He nuzzles his nose against Brendan's jaw, presses soft lips to Brendan's throat, slides one leg over Brendan's body and soaks him through. _

_"Mmmhh. Yes, please."_


	2. IOWA

Word Count ~ 2300

* * *

**IOWA**

It's two days, two state lines later, and it's midday, or something - Brendan has a watch but time really is meaningless to him usually. His neck is prickling, heavy pressure of awareness skittering over him and making him alert.

They're sat in a pokey, out of the way diner in a little place near Ceder Rapids called Marion. The kind of place that Steven loves, the kind that serve thick, fluffy pancakes with every topping imaginable, and Brendan loves it too because he gets to sit and drink free-flowing coffee and watch Steven lick syrup and fresh cream from his cutlery and then from his lips and sometimes, when Brendan thinks someone's looking at them, when he spots a real red-neck trucker type and makes him for what he _really_ is, he likes to watch Steven lick syrup and fresh cream off Brendan's fingers.

He likes to watch those guys flush red, first with arousal, buried deep but it's there, Brendan can always see the ones that hide, and then with defiant rage.

Someone's looking now and his neck _is _prickling. Brendan just needs to know what he's dealing with.

"Steven - " he says quietly and Steven looks up from the paper he's reading. _Two men, armed, extremely dangerous, do not approach_ - Steven had caught sight of it earlier in a rack outside a 7-Eleven and he'd swiped it with quick hands, rolled it and had it tucked up under his clothes before Brendan had even realised what he was about to do. He'd called Steven a dirty bloody thief and Steven had laughed and called him a pyromaniac psycho and it had gone on for a while, back and forth quips that got increasingly more ridiculous until Brendan had called Steven a peachy-arsed syrup-coated-spoon, "_like the one's off the old Lyle's adverts, stick it on your muffin_," and Steven had laughed himself stupid and claimed Brendan the winner.

Brendan flicks his head to the left and Steven gets it, instantly, gaze shifting over Brendan's shoulder and flitting, unobtrusively studying. He's as good as, if not better than, Brendan at this - uncanny gift of assessing people and seeing scum. He's _knows _scum, knows trouble when he sees it; all survival instinct and a lifetime learning how to recognise people who're out to hurt him. Brendan had made a point of hunting down every single one of those fuckers, all of them seared into Steven's memories and nightmares vividly, and making them apologise through their own bubbling blood.

He leans across the table, casual and close, eyes shifting back and forth from Brendan out into the room. Then he scoffs. "Yeah, they're not 'appy."

"They?"

"Two of 'em, both pretty big," he says, hardly moving his mouth. "Lookin' over but I don't think they're the closet types. They look pretty disgusted."

"Good."

Brendan signals for the cheque and the waitress hands it over. He hands her the cash, _a little bit extra for yourself, darlin', _and she dips low and obvious, smiles at him like she's got this one in the bag, hooked him good and she's reeling that line already.

"I love your accent, what is that?"

"Emerald Isles, sweetheart," he says in a low drawl and she touches him, just his shoulder but he doesn't like it and neither does Steven and she's suddenly wearing half a cup of tepid coffee all down her uniform.

"Oops. Think we've 'ad a bit of a spill," Steven states in a cold, sarcasm-dripped voice and Brendan looks at him, sees ice in his eyes and presumes that she does too because she splutters around her next words and backs away.

"I-I'll just get a cloth - "

"You do that, _sweetheart._" He watches her retreat and arches an eyebrow at Brendan.

"What? I didn't say a thing."

"They're lucky they do good pancakes," Steven says and stands up, rolls his shoulders and clenches his visibly trembling hands, touches the colt Brendan knows is hidden at his hip like he's twitchy and it tells him exactly what Steven means by that statement.

"Hey. Bigger things, Steven." Brendan gets up and crowds close to him, speaks softly like he's soothing a skittish horse. He watches Steven visibly relax, loosen up. He goes from sharp edges to guileless and vulnerable right before Brendan's eyes and he thinks, _good boy,_ _that's it, _and brushes his lips ever so softly against Steven's own in a ghost of a whisper-kiss.

He places a hand low on Steven's back and guides them through the diner and he watches how the two guys size up in his boy in a split second, his oh-so-sweet and docile boy, doe eyes and delicate smile, and then they're closer and it's instant eye contact with one of the two, the biggest, because that's who Brendan's looking at, avid and with as much heat as he can convincingly fake. He lets his eyes slip away, fall to ground, _oops, you caught me looking, now what?_ and he gets a good idea because Big-boy nudges his friend and it's pretty much on.

They're twenty metres from the door when he hears the footsteps and he ducks his head, tosses Steven a smirk and sees him lit up and breathing hard, mouth parted and he whirls around, lightning quick, gun cocked and safety off.

"Hiya," he says, broad and so, _so _foreign in this place and they don't know what to do with him, not at all. Big-boy's wary but he's still the cocky type, eyebrow raised in a taunt. His friend's smarter, can read Steven a little better, and he puts a hand on Big-boy's arm in warning. It looks like a familiar gesture, he's used to holding him back. Seems like Big-boy gets himself into trouble often.

"And what are you gonna do with that, huh, boy?" the guy asks sceptically.

"Well - I'm not gonna _shoot_ you, don't worry," Steven replies evenly and Big-boy actually frowns, caught surprised, and Brendan can tell these guys don't like to go off book much. Their usual victims don't give them much of a challenge, then.

"Hey, look buddy, we're just walking to our car, that's all - " the friend says placatingly, hands up in front of him now, show them how harmless he is, and Steven laughs.

"Oh - oh, well then, why didn't you just say that - " he scoffs, all amused, drawling sarcasm, and lowers his weapon and flings his arms out and Brendan thinks, for fucks sake, boy's off his fucking head he's so reckless sometimes, and that's all it takes to get them rushed. It's okay, though. It's uncoordinated, panic rushing and Steven's got the gun held on Big-boy again as quick as he had it flailing off into the horizon like a lunatic.

Friend is sloppy and it's a good job Brendan _does _like going off book because he dodges easily, gets one arm around his middle, presses him over it and knees him in the face hard, once, twice, satisfying crack of bone, then lets him fall to the floor, doubled over and making this high, keening noise like a dying animal. It's not enough and now there's adrenaline singing through his veins, the lust for pain and blood like a physical itch, and he shoves at the guy with his boot until he topples over onto his side.

"Get up. Fuckin' pathetic," he spits and and it works, the guy rolls over onto all fours and staggers upright. He spares a look for his Big-boy friend but Brendan doesn't worry, never does until he hears shots go off and then only because it means unwanted attention.

The guy comes at him again and Brendan lets him get a punch in, hurts like a mother-fucker, right to his jaw, but he's gotta make it look like Friend has a fighting chance and he doesn't mind pain, not at all. He focuses, listens to the hum of his body, lets it spread down his limbs and into his fingers, curled, now, into fists, and then he moves. He's a flurry of pure motion, hit after hit connecting, lets the guy get in a couple more of his own, fucking weak ones, he's too uncoordinated now, until he's staggering and actually backing up, confused and whimpering and Brendan stands, looks at him, _considers _him.

"We're leaving, we're leaving - _now!_ Look, we didn't mean any trouble - " He's begging, bleeding, woozy and swaying on his feet, and Brendan barks a laugh.

"I know exactly what you _meant_," he growls, low and rough and furious, and the guy's eyes go wide with despair before Brendan shoves the heel of his hand up into his nose and he falls back, right over and to the ground where he gurgles and chokes on his own blood. He doesn't look away until the sickly, inhuman noise stops and the light flickers from his eyes and he thinks, idly, to himself, _never lasts long enough._

It's so fucking good, though. So much electricity sparking through him, pleasure effervescent through his blood, and he turns, eyes locking on Steven, still and deadly with six-foot-three-inches facing down his pretty, silver and ivory-handled barrel.

"Looking a bit nervous there, _honey-bunch_," Brendan calls out to Big-boy brightly, strides over, loose and swaggering and _fuck, _he feels fucking good and Steven looks at him like he's hungry, like he wants to mount Brendan right here in the car park, dead body - _bodies_ - be damned.

"We didn't - I don't_ - _" Big-boy babbles desperately because his friend's dead in a pool of his own blood yards away and things are looking pretty grim. Brendan slides around him, presses close, just off-side enough for Steven to still get a clean shot if he needs to, and touches him gently, two fingers against his throat, a hand brushing his shoulder.

"This what you thought I wanted?" he asks softly and Big-boy shakes his head, mouth curled, unmistakeable disgust even through his fear. Deeply ingrained, that.

"Don't - fuckin' hands off me - faggot - " and the word is barely there, stuttered and frantic but Brendan hears it, lets it soak into him and mix and flow with the rest of his tightly reigned rage.

"You see that guy over there, the one with the gun aimed between your eyes?" he asks slowly and Big-boy does see, it's practically all he can see, and Brendan turns because he wants to see, too, just for a second and _fuck _he shouldn't have. Sight like that can make a man lose focus. "Fuckin' beautiful, ain't he? Man like _you_ couldn't even deny it; be straight-up lying if he did - pun intended."

He chuckles at his own little joke and hears Steven tut behind him, knows without looking that he's rolling his eyes, fond and sarcastic. Big-boy really seems to have nothing to say to that so he goes on.

"Now - let's be logical here. I get to fuck _him _whenever I feel like it, and I mean _whenever _I feel like it. Boy's horny as Hell all the time. So fucking sweet, too, like ripe fruit, and the way he opens up for me, greedy, like he can't get enough." He glances back, just turns and slants his eyes over his shoulder and Steven's eyes are dark, liquid intensity. Boy's eating up Brendan's words like they're the damn word of God. He lowers his voice, rough now, lets some of that anger bleed. "And _you?_ You think I'd dare? Wouldn't fuck you to save my life, mate. Not even if you offered to pay me."

"Then let me go, what the Hell are you doing?"

"I'm gonna just - " he says and stops, slips behind Big-boy and pulls his arms behind his back, holds him firm before panic pushes through confusion and he starts to struggle. " - hold onto you here for a little bit."

Steven tosses him the gun and Brendan catches it quickly, movement completely, effortlessly executed, and pushes it up against Big-boy's temple, buries one hand in his hair to yank his head back, and by the time both pairs of eyes land back on Steven, he has a hand full of sharp, glinting steel and a smile to match. He comes close, slow controlled grace, predatory and completely, utterly engaged. Beautiful - so easy with a blade in his hand. His Steven likes to worm his way close with flutter-framed, doe eyes and soft smiles before he bleeds them, near enough to see the very moment they realise just how wrong they had him.

He holds up the knife, draws it across Big-boy's throat and Brendan can see how dark his eyes are from this close, ink black, all pupil, and has to hold on tight because Big-boy's squirming, struggling furiously in his arms. He knows he's going to die, be it from the knife or the gun, so he has nothing to lose now. He's a desperate man on the very precipice of death and Brendan can taste the thick, cloying tang of it in the air, licks his lips and inhales because he can never get enough.

"Look at me," Steven commands, low and smooth, and it seems that neither of them can resist.

His eyes meet Brendan's across the dead-man's trembling shoulder and he blinks, once, slow, and slices deep.

*/*/*

_The paper hasn't named them, doesn't even have a decent picture just grainy CCTV footage. They're obviously not aware of their UK records then, not holding any kind of international investigation. Yet.  
_

_ "Twenty-three year old male, five-eight, slim build, dark-blond hair, blue eyes, blah blah blah, sounds like a men seeking men adve - wait, what - Bonnie and Clyde? And I suppose I'm Bonnie, then?"_

_"Very bonny," Brendan says with a smirk over the rim of his coffee and Steven shakes his head, corners of his mouth turned up._

_He snuffles a laugh through his nose. "Too charmin' for your own good, you."_

_"And who'd keep your arse out of trouble if I wasn't?"_

_"You get my arse into plenty of trouble, thanks."_


	3. ILLINOIS

Word Count ~ 3700

* * *

**ILLINOIS**

The LaSalle news outlets are going mad. Everyone's saying there's a storm a-comin' toward Illinois, a real big one. Stay indoors, they're saying.

Brendan really hates been told what to do.

"Let me get this right. You're wantin' to go for a _walk_?"

"Yup."

"In a storm warnin'?"

"Yup."

"'Ave you lost it?" Steven asks and Brendan gives him a cheeky smile, bites his bottom lip, and Steven rolls his eyes. "Never had it to begin with, did you?"

The heat is tremendous, air thick like globbing syrup, humidity so dense his t-shirt starts to cling to him the very second he steps out the door. The sky is gun-metal grey and the clouds make a low, impenetrable roof across the land. It's like they're shut tight inside a darkening box, trapped, and it makes Brendan itch all over.

"Wow - " He turns and sees Steven staring up at the sky in awe. He'll never tire of that look. Showing Steven the world, showing him freedom and excitement and fear, it's exhilarating in a way nothing else comes close to.

"Come on." Brendan takes his hand and pulls and Steven comes, just like that.

The first spots of rain hit him whilst they're crossing the dusty wasteland close to the river, nothing but flat as far as the eye can see, landscape dotted with scattered trees and the ink-black, imposing structure of the Illinois Railroad bridge spanning the length of the water's surface.

Brendan grips Steven's fingers through his own and they pick up speed, hurtle towards it through the sparse, grey-brown undergrowth, sky so dark now that the plants become twisted, grabbing silhouettes on the horizon, arthritic fingers clinging at his jeans as he spins and throws Steven forward with his arm like a whip, sweeps forward to wrap his arms around his middle and haul him off his feet and spin them both until Steven shrieks and laughs.

The drizzle turns into a shower and they're soaked with sweat and rain-water and Steven throws his arms out and turns his face up against the spray. He stands against the navy sky like an offering to the Heavens themselves and lightning bolts behind him, a streak of pure white, and the air charges thick with electricity. Steven looks back at him, eyes going wide and diamond-bright and he smiles in delight.

Brendan feels power hum through his skin like the sky's opened up into him. The hairs on his body stand up with static. He bows his head against the onslaught of water and watches it shine and sluice off him in waves and he looks up through it, into Steven's eager, feverish gaze, and flicks his head in a wordless gesture.

Steven turns over his shoulder and back again, gives him a slow half-smile, and then takes off in a sprint across the plains.

Brendan gives him four quick heartbeats head start and tears after him.

He gets close, stretches out a hand and tries to get a grip on Steven's shoulder. He dodges to the left, ducks Brendan's next lunge towards him whippet-quick just like Brendan taught him. They square off, Steven's smile like cut-glass, sharp and deadly, and Brendan feints right. Steven falls for it, steps left, and Brendan gets his wrist and loses it instantly, grip slippy from the rain. Steven laughs out clear like a ringing bell and blows him a kiss before he bolts away again and Brendan picks the up the chase, blood pumping and focus narrowed on his prey.

Steven disappears under the shadow of the bridge supports, ducks behind a steel beam and Brendan swings around it, tries to grab him but the slippery little bastard wriggles free of him again, smirks at him like a _real _challenge and runs to the next beam, jumps and hurls himself against it and grabs it half-way up, turning his momentum into a quick climb up the latticework. Brendan can run faster but Steven's the better climber, weighs less and so agile it should be a sin.

He watches and appreciates the view for a second and then he's hurtling after him, makes up for speed with sheer strength as he levers himself up, gets a solid grip and a firm foothold where Steven slips and Brendan's heart hammers the whole time with terror. If Steven falls -

It doesn't happen, though.

Brendan sees him haul his body up to the top and roll out of sight and he follows him five seconds later, gets a hand around one metal, criss-crossing piece of barrier and pulls up over the lip of the bridge, gets to his feet on the slippery surface. He's suffocating on the smell of hot, melting wood and pine, wet grass and deep, rich earth. It's a heady mixture and his head swims with it.

Steven leans against the opposite barriers, sprawled out across a diagonal-slanted bar, one leg bent at the knee and foot planted on the metal, and Brendan's going to fuck him right up against that support. Steven knows it, too; Brendan can see it in the way he's no longer smiling. He's looking at Brendan the way he looks with a knife in his hand; he looks at Brendan like he might want to cut him just to touch his blood.

Thunder crashes and rumbles, closer than before, and Brendan stalks over the shaking rails, sure as the sky's pouring, and plants both his hands beside Steven's head, swings one leg over his body to stand astride him and the barrier he's half laid across, boxes him in from top to bottom. Steven watches him through his lashes, mouth parted, eyes dark.

"Caught me," he states, simple matter of fact. "Now what?"

The rain misses them here under the cover of the long straight bar fifteen feet above; cuts in two streams and surrounds them like a shimmering curtain. Brendan leans into Steven's space, rests some of his weight on his warm body, ever-so-slight press, chest to chest, stomach to stomach. He considers Steven silently, looks him over, inhales the scent of him, water and arousal.

"Gonna get my dick in you, Steven," he promises in a low growl. "Fuck you, nice and deep, right out here."

Steven's chest rises and falls against his own and Brendan senses he wants to hear more, wants to hear Brendan _tell _him exactly how he's going to make him scream.

Brendan makes space between them, notices how Steven arches after contact ever so slightly, almost unconsciously, and trails a finger down from his collarbone to his waistband, flicks his button and reaches inside, gets a firm hand around the half-hard width of him and strokes him lazy until Steven's eyelids drop half-mast.

"Gonna get these fingers inside you," he says, gives the head of Steven's dick a slow rub with his index and middle finger and goes on, "and I'm gonna find that spot that makes you moan - " Steven does, he fucking moans, " - and rub you all loose, make some room in there, carve myself a space, yeah?"

"Fuck, yeah - yeah, Bren - "

"Mmmhmm," Brendan hums, lips close in a slight brush, enough to make Steven's eyes flutter.

He tugs on the waistband of Steven's jeans and boxers and wriggles them down enough for him to get his hand down, underneath Steven's balls, velvety roll of them in his palm, and further until he can rub against Steven's hole, feel the muscles give under his fingertips, satisfying as fuck the way Steven's body responds and opens up to him like a flower under the sun, like nature itself. "Feel good?"

"Always," Steven says and he's suddenly lit up with another strike of lightning, eyes reflecting white light like sun-caught marbles. He's all open-mouthed, head tipped back, lazy like he's just _that _content here against this bridge with Brendan's fingers pushing their way up into him.

Brendan works him until his muscles start to tense, until he starts to shift forward against Brendan's hand, and then he crooks his fingers up, gets the swollen gland right under his fingertips and applies pressure, back and forth motion, rubs him until he's pawing at Brendan's shoulders and making stammering, mewling little noises of desperation.

He's too fascinated to stop, though; can't stop watching Steven's face just melt with all that focus on the most sensitive part of him, can't stop watching his muscles strain and tremble and all because of what _he's _doing. It never gets old, having this kind of power over Steven's body. Steven puts himself in Brendan's hands willingly, fucking eagerly, and Brendan moulds and shapes him into whatever animal he chooses.

"Brendan - Brendan, please - tell me what you're gonna do next - " Steven begs and he can't refuse Steven _anything _when he begs so nicely.

"Gonna turn you over, get that pretty arse of your's up so I can see it, hold you open, maybe get my tongue in there, wet you up a bit - "

" - _Jesus - _"

"Not even close, Steven," Brendan chuckles, his voice pitched so low it's a rumble, can hardly hear it over another deep, earth-shattering roll of thunder. "Does that sound good? Let you ride my face for a bit?"

"Sounds amazin' - why the fuck are you still talkin'?" Steven asks, half-joking, half-fucking-nigh-on-keening with desperation.

Brendan gives him a squeeze, tight iron-fisted grip, and says, "like the sound of my own voice, you cheeky fucker."

"Don't I know it," Steven breathes, head thrown back and air stuttering out of him.

Brendan grins at him, bares his teeth, sharp and wolfish. He takes his hands off Steven's body and grips one shoulder to pull him away from the support, over onto his stomach and back against it in one fluid movement. He sees Steven brace underneath him, get his arms folded and one knee against the metal under himself to hold his weight, and Brendan slides down to sit straddling the bar, another vertical support at his back to stop him from hitting the floor.

He gets his palms flat on Steven's arse cheeks, kneads at the flesh, spreads him open and watches goosebumps break out all across his skin. He purses his lips and blows cool air against Steven's hole and hears him whisper above, _fuck, _and then Brendan gets in close, presses his kiss-pouted lips against him and moves with the arching roll of Steven's hips as he grinds back. Brendan holds his hip, slides a hand around to his front, presses his lower stomach and urges Steven to ride him just like he promised; never breaks his promises to his boy, he'd rather die.

Steven gets with it quickly and Brendan relaxes his tongue, makes it soft and sloppy, sucks and licks and lets Steven find his own pleasure until he's begging for Brendan's tongue inside him and Brendan obliges that, too, pushes the tip against the loosening ring of muscle and wriggles his way in, slicks him up with his spit, lets it gather and drip down against Steven's balls, spreads it with one hand as he rolls them in a palm.

Steven gasps and moans and moves, becomes an utter mess under Brendan's tongue and hands, a half-puddled, shivering long line of muscle and bone and sensation. Brendan looks up the length of him to another fork of bright lightning, so close it's almost on top of them now, pressure in the air growing and sparking, skin crackling like static off the bridge beams.

"What now, Bren?" he calls out, broken and scraping gravel.

Brendan sucks one last kiss against him, makes it extra wet, extra sloppy. "Now I'm gonna fuck you, Steven."

"Make me come, _please_ - I need - I'm fucking dyin' here - seriously, I can't - " Brendan doesn't find out what he _can't _because Steven's dissolved into pleading incoherence.

He's pretty sure there's no more sense to be had out of the boy, he's nearly as fucking wrecked himself just from the sheer desperation, the absolute, burning desire that grows out of control between them, more and more, like it's climbing to infinity. He thinks it can't get any _more, _any _bigger_, but then it does, it snarls and twists into an untameable beast and keeps on going, just gains momentum. He can't get enough of Steven, can't take his eyes off him and Steven can't breath without Brendan, can't function without Brendan to make him whole.

Nothing is ever enough so they carve a path through this country and try to satiate that need in other ways just to stop from _devouring _each other.

Brendan stands, gets a hand secured against the surface just above Steven's head, and uses his free hand to pop his jeans open and pull out his swollen, fucking painfully hard dick. He positions himself properly, rubs the head across Steven's entrance, pushes in and feels the muscles slip open and cling tight, swallow him up in heat.

"God, Steven - look at you - " he chokes out, watches Steven take him in, slow inch-by-inch. "Fucking easiest thing, hottest thing I'll ever see."

"Come on, Bren - fuck me - " Steven grinds out, looks back over his shoulder and scrabbles one hand over the top of Brendan's above him, pushes his fingers through Brendan's own and grips, knuckles white.

Brendan takes another moment - just to appreciate the sight: Steven's arse angled up, Brendan's dick buried deep. Steven's face, flushed and shining wet, water droplets clinging delicately in his eyelashes. He pulls out, gives Steven a smile, gets a wicked, burning-hot one in return, and punches back into his body so hard Steven cries out and slips up the girder several inches.

"Bloody, _Jesus_ - just like that, Bren - " Steven stutters and pleads and Brendan holds his hip and gives it to him, fucks him sharp and precise, tries a few angles until Steven's spine curves into a perfect bow and he keens along to another heavy rumble of thunder, fucking harmony to Brendan's ears.

"Right there, Steven?"

Steven doesn't reply with words, just nods, drops his forehead to the metal and groans in affirmation, and Brendan keeps the position and nails him again and again, hits him where it feels fucking good, makes sure to focus the pressure, makes it hard enough. Steven's wild beneath him, gasping for breath and flexing his fingers, scratching against the solid supports and Brendan's own hand.

He's completely lost to Brendan, nothing but pliant, quivering flesh in Brendan's grip, nerves and pounding pulse and rushing blood. Steven responds so shockingly powerful to every stimulus; Brendan plays him like a familiar instrument and turns him into this every time and it never ceases to floor him how completely Steven gives himself over. It makes him strain in return, makes him reach out along that tangible connection that holds between them, unbreakable as the steel in this bridge, and let himself go in the knowledge that he'll never fall as long as that safety exists.

Lightning silently streaks, so close he has to shut his eyes against it, and he feels half-delirious with shockingly mounting pressure and exposure to the most violent elements. He feels his orgasm curling and winding through him like smoke tendrils, tight grip of Steven's muscles around him, dragging, hot friction and Steven's breathless, ragged moans. He's desperate to get closer and sprawls forward, moulds himself to Steven's back and buries his lips into the side of Steven's neck, licks and scrapes his teeth against his jaw, catches Steven's lips when he turns back and slides his tongue into that hot mouth, wet and slick.

"You close?" he asks roughly and Steven nods, gasps into Brendan's mouth and Brendan drags in painful, heaving breaths like the air is too thick to breath.

He worms his hand around Steven's hip and grips his dick and strokes him in time to his relentless, merciless thrusts. Steven's muscles flutter and tense around his cock and then he goes completely silent, stomach tensing against Brendan's forearm, so tight that it must ache. He seizes in Brendan's embrace, jerks and spills come over Brendan's fist, never ending fucking stream of it, on and on until he's whimpering and sobbing, _oh, God, oh, God, _and still shuddering, still coming, long and fucking hard and Brendan can't hold back anymore, can't survive Steven's ecstasy, dragged screaming over the edge himself and fucks Steven through it all, feels the sheer, brute force of rumbling thunder and simultaneous cracking lightning as it shakes the foundations of the bridge and send shockwaves through Brendan's body right along with the searing hot sing of his orgasm.

It tears out of him and he rides it out blindly into Steven's loosening body, feels Steven's hole slick and slapping wetly as Brendan fills him with come and fucks it out of him until he's spent and weak, collapsing against Steven's back and pressing him into the support while they both breath and calm the hell down.

"Fuckin' hell, Brendan - " Steven eventually sighs and he wriggles under Brendan's weight, gets his jeans up and shifts onto his back with all the experience of someone who's used to tight spots, and they slide down the metal into a heap, Steven sprawled in Brendan's lap where he's kneeling, straddling the bar and propped up against the vertical support at his back. "It's always good but _fuck me _that was one of the best."

"Bridge gettin' points?"

"Abso-fucking-lutely. Only the Chevy beats this."

Ah, the Impala. He's still going to have to set aside some time to fuck Steven in that car one last time before they're forced to ditch it and find something new.

Brendan idly tucks his fingertips under Steven's soaking t-shirt and draws circles against the skin of his belly, touches the tattoo above his hip. Salcombe Harbour Hotel balcony, drunk on vintage Dom Perignon and sea-salt air and the taste of freedom. Steven had laid out for him on the grey-mesh lounger and Brendan had pressed those words into his skin with ink and needles and his own laving tongue. Go bás - 'til death.

Steven watches him through lazy, hooded eyes with his mouth turned up at the corners, real and genuine smile laced with a dark edge of possessive adoration, something they share together on that precarious knife-edge of insanity. He can almost see the word _mine _carving a bloodied path through his lips.

"All yours, baby," Brendan purrs and Steven smiles wider, eyes bright and fever-hot, pleased as fucking punch, cat that got the cream.

"And me?" Steven asks slowly, knowingly.

"All mine," Brendan tells him roughly, pitches his voice low and dangerous. "Anyone ever tries to take you away from me, I'll make 'em beg for death." Steven laughs, delighted; his lust for Brendan's chaotic, merciless brutality almost as insatiable as his lust for Brendan's body. His boy's not stable and Brendan fucking loves him. "Have I told you how much I fuckin' love you, lately?"

"Not since that post man yesterday afternoon."

"I fucking love you."

"Love you, too, Bren."

Steven raises his hand, holds it out, palm facing him and Brendan gets it, pushes their hands together and links their fingers. Steven pulls the joint appendages into his lap and strokes over Brendan's sore, grazed knuckles tenderly.

"Wanna head back?" Brendan asks softly but despite the damp he's actually pretty damn relaxed.

The lightning's passed on overhead, the rain a fine and gentle cascade. The breeze has picked up, air clearer, storm's suffocating weight dissipating. It's much cooler, much fresher.

"Nah," Steven says gracelessly, shuffles forward in Brendan's lap until they're pressed together, Steven's arms sliding around his neck and fingers pushing into Brendan's wet hair. "You look too good out 'ere - just wanna kiss you."

Brendan tips his head up, nuzzles his nose against Steven's jaw, scrape of stubble stinging, murmurs, "bring it," and Steven slides his lips across Brendan's, licks his way inside Brendan's mouth and kisses him slow and thorough to the sound of falling rain and the heady smell of wood and pine.

*/*/*

_" - a mounting pile of dead bodies and no evidence, what exactly is being done to catch these killers?"_

_"We have our best teams across three states working around the clock to assure - "_

_"Nobody's assured, Police Commissioner. These men are rampaging through town after town, unchecked - "_

_Brendan trails his fingers across the back of Steven's neck, arms stretched out across the bench seat. He has one hand on the wheel, foot all the way to the floor, engine roaring with life beneath him. Cool air plays across his heated skin from the rolled down windows and he glances across to Steven and Steven looks back, lazy contentment easy on his features._

_" - we are doing everything within our power to catch the perpetrators of these heinous crimes."_

_"With all due respect Police Commissioner: try telling that to Mrs West, her husband was brutally beaten to death, and Mrs Sullivan, who's husband's throat was slit - "_

_Steven scoffs. "We did 'em a favour if you ask me."_

_Brendan laughs. "I don't think they'd see it that way. Find some music, this guy's whinging is pissing me off."_

_Steven fiddles with the radio, red marker moving over the roll-over dial scale, real deal, that, no high-tech digital shit in this car, until he finds something clear._

_" ~ everyone is lucky, everyone is so kind, on the road to Shambala ~ "_


	4. INDIANA

Word Count ~ 5600

Notes: If I disappear suddenly it's because of the research I was doing for this chapter. I'm fairly certain I'm on about six different MI5 terrorist watch-lists at the moment.

* * *

**INDIANA**_  
_

_"Not gussied up or cute, Lafayette is a sturdy town, persistent in its character." _

Brendan had read that in The Smithsonian.

Steven had swiped it for him because he'd never had one before and Steven likes to give him things, likes to collect souvenirs of their chaotic, nomadic life, a stamp book, a local paper, a fine piece of jewellery. On one really weird occasion he'd stolen a ladle from an expensive restaurant kitchen. Brendan still has it, somewhere.

Patricia Henley had been right, though. Lafayette is a sturdy town. Makes Brendan want to use pressure and fire and chemicals to see just _how _sturdy.

They're not in any dire need of cash, not between Brendan's iron-clad poker face and Steven's quick and nimble fingers, but sometimes he just likes to do things for the hell of it, just because he _can_.

Brendan finds the place, quaint little red-brick building, ribbed vaulting and Gothic arching, pretty white doorframes and classic pointed windows. It's in a prime spot, close to the road but set back from the other buildings by a long path and green squares of neat grass and white rose bushes, whole perimeter of it just space. There's money in there but he's not in it for the money. The building is beautiful and he intends to give it some scars.

He develops a love for the ice-cream they make at this little parlour on Concord Road and he and Steven visit every afternoon, sit outside at little intricately, woven-iron tables, white brick store-front and red-striped awning over the front bay window. They try the different flavours, different toppings, cream and sauce and sprinkles and fruit, make a mission out of getting through all eighty before they skip town. Brendan closes his eyes and Steven feeds him cool cream from a dainty, long-handled spoon and he guesses which two or three Steven's mixed together. Sometimes, Steven kisses him instead, open and slick, taste of strawberry or mint on his tongue and Brendan tells him he _didn't quite get it that time, gimmie some more._

Every day on their way back they cross the street, walk two blocks, turn the corner, walk two more. Every day they pass Brendan's little red building.

Brendan drives to the local gas station and fills up a canister with diesel. He buys several large, plastic water bottles, the kind he uses to fill up his car radiator, and gets Steven a bag of pear drops as an afterthought, loves the way they taste on him.

They find an out-of-the-way, dingy hobby-shop. Steven had wheedled the information out of a drunk, old geezer in a dive-bar up State Road. Brendan had slid home ball after ball across the pool table, played two guys for every penny they were worth, and Steven had drunk whiskey and smoked cigars with Ole' Jimmy Bridewell and talked about his grandkids, Ivy and Sarah and James. He'd carefully told Ole' Jimmy about Leah and Lucas, manipulated him, made himself open and relateable.

_"Miss mine. An't seen 'em in a while."_

_"Happens, son. People change."_

Jimmy had been there, he tells Steven. 1964 and all his friends had held their draft cards proud and marched off to kill the evil Viet Cong. Jimmy had a girl in the YSA and she'd convinced him to rally at Times Square with her. He'd stood up on the monument and burnt his draft card with twelve other men and the crowd had cheered for them like they were the God-damn Stones or something. He'd fought for his country with peace signs and slogans and when the retaliation came, petrol bombs and Molotov cocktails

The place Jimmy tells them about is close to the town center. It's supposed to be white concrete but it's had a half-arsed makeover recently, green paint rolled halfway up the front walls like someone started the job and forgot they'd need a ladder. Inside it's cool, expensive, top-notch air conditioning set off against the suffocation of dust and decay. Brendan's relieved; it's thirty-five degrees outside and you gotta keep those chemicals cool. It's the satisfaction of someone around here knowing what they're doing, the satisfaction he feels at competency.

They don't have a license to even breath the fucking air in this place so Brendan distracts the guy behind the counter, real anarchist type, shaved head and thick black-rimmed glasses, Mikhail Bakunin printed on his black t-shirt; no Che Guevara for this guy, he's no pop culture consumer. His name's Stuart and he talks to Brendan about high-end explosives and socialism and Brendan hopes he doesn't make a hobby out of combining the two; if Brendan's going to blow shit up he's doing it for shits and giggles not to forward the cause of humanity.

They're all fucking damned anyway.

Steven comes up close to his shoulder some minutes later, smile firmly in place, and Brendan considers him for a moment before dipping his head and brushing their lips together in a kiss. He slants his eyes over to Stuart, just curious, really, and Stuart nods and touches his fist to his chest like an offering of something. Brendan doesn't need his fucking approval, he really _was _just curious, but he likes Stuart and he doesn't like many people so they leave with nothing but a _thanks for the chat, see ya around._

They pay for a cheap motel room even though they're staying at the Hampton Inn. It's a by the hour job, middle-aged clerk giving them a knowing look, almost obscene the way she touches her tongue to the corner of her lips, looks between them like she might be after an invitation. She calls Brendan _sweety _and touches his fingers when she hands the keys over and he thinks - shouldn't have done that, love, before Steven's right there, snatching the keys out of Brendan's palm quick as lightning and there's suddenly a gash across the clerks wrist, blood welling over against torn skin. She looks down at it in stone-cold shock and Steven says _oops, proper clumsy, me _with a sweet smile and she's giving him a half-laugh, kind of hiccuping choke like she's not sure that the fuck just happened.

Steven takes Brendan's arm tightly and drags him outside. They get the bags from the trunk and Steven unlocks the door and dumps everything on the bed before he whirls around in the center of the room.

Brendan drawls, "you sure you don't wanna invite our new friend in?" and it gets Steven moving across the floor like nothing could stop him.

Brendan meets him halfway, sees Steven bend his knees ever so slightly and he dips low when Steven pounces on him, graceful and lithe like a fucking cat, and Brendan gets his arm tight around his back, one hand hooking under Steven's thigh and Steven fucking _climbs _his body, pushes against his shoulders to get height in the circle of his arms and tangles his fingers into Brendan's hair painfully and kisses him, devours his mouth, hard and claiming and possessive.

He forgets all about why they even got this room when Steven rolls his hips, friction of rubbing denim against his hardening cock, and he pulls Steven's thigh up tighter around him, angles his body with the arm low around his waist until the pressure's perfect and they're just moving together, sloppy mesh of tongues and hips meeting to match.

Brendan sweats through the thin material of his t-shirt, feels Steven's back damp against his bare forearm. The humid air, tinged thick with the smell of sex already, and the anticipation of what they're about to do makes his head spin. He walks forward, throws Steven down onto the bed next to the bag of chemicals and leans over him, arms braced to either side of his shoulders.

"We got work to do, baby," he says in a low rumble and Steven laughs, delighted, and arches up to kiss him some more, soft and lazy.

Brendan finds the air-conditioning unit and flicks it to reluctant, sputtering life, goes to the window and shuts the thin curtains, seam to seam. He watches Steven sort through the containers and bottles and goes into the bathroom to grab towels. He puts on the old alarm clock radio and they strip down to bare chests to avoid burns and stains as well as the still-crawling heat.

Between then they get the chemicals and equipment set out on the wooden surface of the room's low, round table.

Steven's an ever-constant distraction, skin shining with a thin sheen of sweat, liquid gathering in the dip beneath his throat, and Brendan stops him on his way to the bathroom to empty out the water bottles to dip his head and lick away the moisture with flat strokes of his tongue. Steven's hands slip against his shoulders and he moans and pushes himself up against Brendan's mouth to the rough and lazy drawl of Otis Rush.

_~ you know I can't quit you babe ~_

"Thought you said we had work to do," he reminds Brendan breathlessly.

_~ when you hear me holler baby ~ _

"What, you can't empty some bottles out with me leeching all over you? Multi-task, Steven_,_" and Steven sloshes water over the back of his neck and asks, _what, like this?_ He's only kind of annoyed because it cools him down some and splashes against Steven and the skin under his lips goes slippery, running wet with rivulets of water that he catches with his tongue. "Very cute."

_~ you know you're my desire ~_

Brendan grabs a towel and dries them both down, takes a minute extra with Steven, swipes the cloth down his body slowly, doesn't take his eyes off Steven's fever-bright ones. He knows that Steven can't wait to watch his fingers work at fine powders and mixtures, fucking loves to see Brendan create like that and Brendan loves to show him, loves to play things until they work and sing for him.

They kneel against the shabby carpet at opposite sides of the low table and Brendan gets to work. He shakes out fine aluminium powder onto a sheet of paper, peppers potassium perchlorate over the top and rolls them together by shaking and moving the sheet until they're evenly mixed. Steven measures out the diesel oil from the canister into the large bottles, dried with sawdust, can't have water getting into the mixture, and pours a quarter in each of the four and Brendan makes paper funnels and folds the flash powder into the bottles and rolls the mixture together until it clumps.

Steven watches him with rapt attention as he adds the ammonium nitrate from the bottles Steven swiped from Stuart's little hobby shop. There's hardly a risk of this shit going off just from knocking it about but he's fucked up before and nearly blown his hand off, got the scars to prove it, small shiny starbursts across his wrist and palm. Live and learn. Adapt. That's what he and Steven do, they learn and adapt and fucking _live _like world's about to end.

He grins over the filled bottles and Steven blinds him with a smile in return.

"We ready?" he asks and Brendan puts his palms on the table-top, levers himself up and gets his knee against it, half crawls across the bottles and powders and chemical containers and gets up real close, inches between them.

"Gonna make 'em burn," Brendan growls into him and Steven surges up against him, kisses him deep and rough and no finesse just pure, animal savagery like he could tear Brendan apart with just his lips.

"Brendan," Steven sighs against him and Brendan _has _to touch.

He skirts around the table and pulls Steven up against him, sweat damp skin sticking up the length of their bodies, and Brendan rubs a thumb under his eye, touches a path down his throat and chest and stomach and doesn't look away from his face. Steven's skin pricks with goosebumps; he's hyper-sensitive and aroused and responsive and Brendan wants that sensation under his mouth so he chases the path of his fingers, ducks and presses his tongue, flat and soft, and follows it with his lips, sucking slow and wet kisses across Steven's body until he shivers and tangles his fingers into Brendan's hair, so fucking sweet the way he sighs and and cradles him close.

Brendan drops to his knees, palms of his hands spanning Steven's hips, huge and possessive. Steven looks down at him through dark eyes, mouth fallen open, spit-shine of his lips like a beacon but Brendan's too low for that now, too absorbed in what's happening down here, push of Steven's dick against his chin through rough denim. Steven strokes a thumb across his bottom lip and Brendan takes it into his mouth and sucks on it whilst he pops Steven's buttons and drags down his zip real slow.

"On the bed, Brendan - I wanna suck you off at the same time - " Steven tells him raggedy and Brendan groans around his thumb.

"You're just full of the best ideas, ain't you?"

"Not just a pretty face, me," he says with a sloppy grin and Brendan helps him out of his jeans, wraps him up in his arms and stands, sweeps Steven off his feet easily and topples them to the bed, rolls over until Steven's in his lap.

He pushes Brendan back against the mattress and grinds against the denim covering his erection, kisses, wet and messy, down his chest and stomach with the slow drag of his tongue and Brendan's eager to feel that hot mouth around his dick, could sob from the anticipation of it, _fuck_. Steven undoes his fly and nuzzles his plush lips against the length of him, pushes a palm against his stomach and Brendan tenses the muscles there, shows Steven how much he wants it, tells him he's fucking _beautiful, _that he wants his mouth, wants to make him come trying to scream around Brendan's dick.

Steven kneels upright across his thighs and takes him in one firm hand, and just watches him, lidded eyes and breath shaky, while he strokes his fist up and down, slow and steady.

"Feel good, Bren?"

"Yeah, Steven," he whispers, pushes his hips up, digs his fingers into the bed covers.

It goes on and on, Steven's eyes blazing a hot trail across his body and just his hand, just the steady up and down, fucking amazing and just enough to make him half-crazy but no more. Brendan alternates between rolling his head back and watching himself disappear through the slip-slide of Steven's fingers. He feels like he's some kind of trance, caught in a haze like a good stare until there's wet heat all around him and he's crying out, pushing up into it, sudden slick lips and tongue dragging across his heated flesh. He looks down, Steven's bright, blue eyes and the stretch of his mouth.

"Oh, fuck - come here, Steven," he urges and pulls at him, one hand around Steven's shoulder until he comes off with an obscene pop and shuffles up the bed, turns and throws a leg over him to straddle his face and Brendan kicks his way out of his jeans before Steven's leaning over his body and swallowing Brendan down again in one smooth slide.

It takes him a minute to get his bearings but he does, puts a fist around the base of Steven's cock and a hand flat against his lower back and guides him in, pushes at him to find a rhythm and then Steven's thighs are shaking, length of him buried deep in Brendan's mouth. He gives it back good, takes Brendan in all the way, head tight and squeezing against the back of his throat, damp and suction, messy, slick sound of slurping, and Brendan spreads him apart with both hands and slides two fingers up inside until he clenches his hands painfully against the skin of Brendan's hip.

"Fuck - Bren - " he chokes out, Brendan's dick resting against his bottom lip, can feel the movement when he talks.

Brendan fingers him, rough like he likes, and Steven presses close into his mouth, buries deep, explosion of salty pre-come across Brendan's tongue and Brendan relaxes out, lets Steven ride him, smooth in and out slide, seals his lips tight against the head and flicks his tongue. Steven kisses his mouth against the length of Brendan's dick, moans and breathes hot puffs of air against him and then takes him back down so far that Brendan's hips jerk and his thighs tremble and he pushes up and Steven doesn't relent, just takes him all the way in until his lips are pressed, snug, against the hair at the base.

He's dizzy with lack of oxygen, works his mouth and moves his hips, pushing up into the velvet heat of Steven's willing throat in small, stuttering bursts. He slides another finger up into Steven's body and just fucks him, all the way in and all the way out and he feels it, feels Steven's muscles tense and his hips go erratic and he's pulling his mouth away and coming down Brendan's throat with a whine until he's swearing and shaking and Brendan has to hold him up to stop from choking.

He strokes Steven's back until he's calmed down before sliding his palms against the back of his head and asking, _"ready?" _and trying to keep his patience. Steven seals his lips back tight around him and Brendan pushes him down all the way, allows himself a moment to enjoy the slick, wet slide before he pushes up and holds Steven down against him, fluttering throat and sloppy noises, fucks into him until his orgasm punches out of him with force, knocks him winded, and Steven takes over, slurps him up and down until Brendan's boneless and sprawled, muscles trembling, head heavy.

Steven nuzzles against him, sucking softly against his softening skin, pressing his tongue against Brendan's hip and thigh like he's making a meal of him. He climbs off Brendan's body, swings back over so he's straddling Brendan's hips, runs his palms up and down across Brendan's still sensitive, shivering skin and follows with his lips, soft and dragging and sweet. Brendan gets his elbows under him for support and watches, tips his head back when Steven sucks against his collarbone and swipes his tongue on a path up his throat, rubs his nose against his chin.

"Hey," Brendan breathes into the inches between them. His voice is hoarse, throat used.

"Hiya."

The line of Steven's mouth is red and puffy and shining and Brendan sits up, raises a hand to touch, strokes a thumb across his lips. Steven cards his fingers into Brendan's hair and scratches against his scalp and makes him sigh.

Brendan soaks in his details, stares and drinks and tries and _tries _to quench that thirst but it's the constant torture of dehydration, the lingering, eternal suffering of not being able to get close enough, not having enough, no being able to touch _everything _all at once. Even now it's unbearable, makes him itch for fire and blood, anything to slake this lust that never leaves.

He watches Steven's eyes, blue swallowed up by black pupil, framed by delicate, too-long lashes, intense and weighing the fucking world the way they watch Brendan in return. Steven's edgy in his lap, jittering ever-so-slightly like there's a vibrating electric current thrumming under his skin. Brendan feels it sparking out of him and directly into his own veins, knows the same stuff runs through both of them. They exist on a wave-length of their own, some fundamental particle, fabric of the universe; it hasn't been discovered by science yet, it's theirs alone.

"Time to go."

Steven swallows, nods.

They dress and pack the bottles carefully into the hold-all bag. Steven delivers the keys back, won't even let Brendan hold the damn things, and Brendan waits by the car. He's quick enough but Brendan knows his boy.

"You realise the last thing we need today is drama?" he asks dryly.

"No drama," Steven says and holds up his hands, palm forwards. Brendan grips one wrist tightly and drags him close and Steven rolls his body against him, looks up at him, inhales deeply. He turns Steven's hand over, sees the red welts and scratches across the thin skin over the back of it. He looks back across the car park, no vacancy sign turned around in the glass door, raises one eyebrow. "We'll be gone soon, anyway." Brendan raises an eyebrow at him. "We'd be gone but she'd still be imagining what it felt like to 'ave your dick in her."

Brendan throws his head back and laughs. "There's plenty of people wonderin' that, Steven."

"Not if I 'ad anything to do with there wouldn't be." Steven says it dryly, quirk to his lips, but Brendan knows he fucking means it.

"Steven," he croons, "that'd be basically genocide."

"Alright, calm down, Mr Modesty."

Brendan laughs, swipes a kiss from him.

They climb in the car, swing by the Hampton to pack up and shower. Brendan drives to an empty stretch of road and fixes the car with new plates. He's only done this a handful of times but _this _car is worth the effort. He's not quite ready to part with her yet. He hauls the hold-all over his shoulder, watches Steven tuck his colt into the back of his jeans.

They start the trek across the small patch of woods separating the road from the rest of town, perfect for slipping in to, getting lost in. Steven chatters on, pushes him with his shoulder, picks up drying leaves and throws them in the air like confetti whilst Brendan whistles the wedding march.

At the very edge there's a four foot wall and beyond that a road. Beyond the road lies Brendan's little red-brick building.

Steven hops the wall and Brendan hands the bag over, climbs over himself. Steven kisses him, quick press to his lips, and crosses through the traffic, slips inside the bank, and Brendan studies his watch, waits the requisite five minutes before he heads over himself. He unzips the bag, two bottles close to the doorway, couple of feet between them. One underneath the wall-mounted air-conditioning unit, one further along the wall, close to the corner where he knows the gas boiler is tucked up in a maintenance cupboard.

Then he goes inside.

It's small and quaint and perfect. They've picked the busiest time, Brendan's got an itch needs scratching, and there's queues at the three glass windows, couple of people sat in little cubicles off across the room, people living their lives, talking about mortgages, loans, starting up businesses and getting that cash together for a proper wedding. He thinks, _ain't gonna happen folks, today's your last, _and spots Steven sat in one of the comfortable oval chairs, chatting to a guy in a pale blue, bank-issued blazer and a pink, silk neck scarf. He's smiling pull pelt and the guy looks fucking blinded, completely taken in, hanging on Steven's every word. He's got one hand reaching out, hovering, almost touching Steven's bare arm, close enough for body heat.

Steven's eyes flick up and catch on him briefly and Brendan braces himself in the doorway, reaches into the bag and pulls out the shotgun.

"How 'bout nobody does anything stupid and I won't have to use this, eh?"

Most of the twenty or so people inside go still, wide-eyed in barely processed shock. It's the bodies natural reaction. Stillness. It makes them feel invisible. They don't know it yet but they're literally petrified. It'll catch up eventually, it always does. That's when they get reckless.

He watches for the couple of real dangerous ones. He'd clocked them straight away, one of the cashiers and one of the customers. The woman in the middle cubical, calm and inching a hand slowly downwards, and the guy with the ratty jeans and the buzz cut, looks marine, looks trained to handle stress, looks between Brendan and his gun like he's calculating how long it'll take to drop them both.

"You - " Brendan says, cocks his weapon at Steven. Steven with his hands up in front of him, expression on his face like dark focus, Mr Cashier edging his way in front of him like he thinks he's a fucking hero, like he wants to protect Brendan's boy from the big bad bank-robber. "Girl in the second window, she's goin' for the alert, and the guy with the army cut, he's a trouble maker."

There's a rustle of sheer confusion spreading like a wave, a stretched-long moment of intaken, held breath, and then Steven's moving, smooth like cool, running water. He's got his colt cocked, aimed and triggered, once, twice. Two bullets. Two crumpled bodies. Danger passed. Then, Steven points his gun into Mr Cashier's rapidly falling face.

"But - "

Steven smiles, bites his lip.

"I wouldn't finish that sentence if I were you. If you didn't notice - boy's a crack shot," Brendan tells him, low, warning. He throws the hold-all at him and he catches it on pure instinct. "You're comin' with me."

Brendan strides over, grabs the scarf around his neck and drags him through the little side door and back behind the windows. "You two, get out there, go on."

The two other cashiers, guy and a girl, both about Brendan's age, both drip-white and trembling, scramble to their feet and shuffle past their dead colleague and her growing, spreading and rolling puddle of blood and out into the main floor.

He throws Mr Cashier to his knees against the cabinets and the kid knows what to do, ain't stupid, Brendan'll give him that much. He starts to fill the the bag with shaking hands and Brendan's shotgun a foot away from his head and Brendan's focus splits between his movements and Steven through the glass.

The people out there watch Steven, too. They're afraid and mesmerised. He's a living, breathing juxtaposition. He's fair and beautiful and sweet as fucking apple pie and he holds a weapon like he was born with it in his hand, like it's an extension of his body.

He can't blame them for their fascination. He enjoys it. He loves the way Steven dangles himself like bait and they bite every fucking time.

Mr cashier's not moving now, just looking up at him through watering eyes and trembling lips. Brendan gestures and he gets up, hands him the bag, heaves in breath like he's losing it, chest rising and falling in rapid, shallow motions like he's choking on air he can't breathe.

"It's okay, son. You did good," Brendan tells him and watches the tears fall. "I saw you admiring my boy out there, before." Brendan watches the colour drain out of his flushed face. Another natural reaction. He loves to bear witness to the way people's bodies respond to him, to his words, to his weapons, to his hands and tongue and cock. "It's okay, hey - it's okay - " Brendan shushes his choked off sobs. "I'm glad. It's nice. He's a sight for sore eyes, that one. You seem like an okay bloke, most men don't get to die with an image like that the last thing they see."

The kid opens his mouth in a whine, a high-pitched litany on _nonononono _and Brendan closes his eyes for a second, breathes it in, desperation and fear and he presses two barrels against Mr Cashier's chest and squeezes the trigger. The kid lurches back, force of it staggering his instantly failing body, open cavern where his ribcage has been cracked wide open, hot blood and muscle and shredded skin. There's tittering screams from the other room and a sickening slap against the ground where the body lands, eyes dull and wide-open. Lights out.

Brendan hauls the bag over his shoulder and pushes through the door. Slightly less than twenty eyes fix on him in abject terror. Steven raises an eyebrow.

"He did somethin' stupid," he says by way of explanation and Steven snuffles a laugh.

Brendan gives the room one last sweep, spots something he didn't before, a woman stood with two children. She's mostly in front of them, shielding their light from the darkness with her own body. He looks to Steven and flicks his head and Steven spots them, too. Nods.

"Come 'ere, you two," he says softly, lowers his weapon and approaches the woman slowly. "Don't be scared, I'm really not gonna hurt you."

"Get away from them, don't you touch - "

"Look, love. I'm getting 'em out of here, okay? You can take 'em to the door yourself if you want. I'm not gonna hurt 'em."

Her eyelashes flutter, rapid blinking to match the rise and fall of her chest. She takes each of her children's hands and leads them cautiously close and Steven faces them, posture loose and non-threatening, and he backs up towards the door as she follows. She kneels and tells them to run, far, into town, anywhere, and they try to cling to her but she pushes them, forces them towards the doorway until they go.

They're just kids; they haven't had time to become their parents yet. One day they will, though. He might catch up with them and then it's fair game. Children don't stay children forever.

"Right, well," Brendan announces, takes a breath, feels Steven come up close to his shoulder. "It was really lovely doing business with you all today. Umm - hope you all - y'know - whatever."

Steven laughs, real dopey guffaw next to him and he nearly cracks up at the sound of it, giddy now, totally swept up in excitement and the pounding rush of blood that comes from pure adrenaline anticipation. He slips the shotgun back into the hold-all, takes Steven's hand and pushes their fingers together and Steven raises the hand with the gun clenched in it, kisses his little finger and blows it into the room.

They stagger out into the bright sunlight like a couple of drunk teenagers and Brendan pulls Steven into his arms at the bottom of the path, holds him tight against his body and smiles against his mouth. Steven grips the silver cross around Brendan's neck and brings it up between them and Brendan presses his lips against it and Steven's fingers and Steven does the same before he lets it drop and slides his tongue inside Brendan's mouth, slow and heady, air thickening and stretching like melted tar.

Brendan runs a hand down his side, trails his fingertips against Steven's wrist, and he takes hold of the colt from the loose grasp. They break the kiss and turn, heads dipped close together and eyes on the prize, pressed together with hardly a breath between them. Steven's hands grip against his shoulders and Brendan holds him close and tight with one arm and he aims and shoots, once, twice, into the bottle close to the doorway.

He sees the first spark ignite and his heart skips and hammers. He takes Steven's hand and they run, sound of hissing, flashing, fucking elemental chain-reaction at their backs. They vault the wall and collapse back against it and huddle together as the Earth shakes and rumbles beneath them and a sound erupts like the very end itself. It shatters through the quiet and sleepy town, they can probably hear it the next town over, and Brendan feels it rattle through his body, feels his skin shiver out into goosebumps despite the temperature. He hears the displaced air whoosh over the top of them and he immediately gets up to look.

The flames roll and glow and climb, thick and gathering black smoke that looks too heavy to rise clouds up the once-clear sky. The door's collapsed. If anyone's left alive they ain't getting out. His little red brick building is ripped apart and wounded, cracked and broken and crumbling. It's warped into a shadow of its once sturdy shape, corrupted and then cleansed by heat and flame.

Steven presses close, makes a noise, a small hum, and Brendan snaps his head to look at his profile, mouth parted, lashes fluttering, single, dark freckle against his cheekbone that Brendan sweeps forward and presses a kiss to. He drags a path down across Steven's jaw and nuzzles against the corner of his mouth and Steven turns into the kiss.

"It's beautiful," he says, breathy and awestruck, fierce orange glow reflecting back at Brendan from his eyes.

They need to get out of here, they need to get across the woods and to the car and over the stateline before the whining sirens start. Brendan needs a few more minutes, though. He needs the heat against his body and Steven's lips under his own and the thrill of destruction singing through his blood.

*/*/*

_" - twenty-one casualties so far reported - made off with about three-hundred thousand dollars - "_

_"I hear a man has been taken in for questioning regarding the incident?"_

_Brendan's got the sleek, metal hood underneath his back, still warm from the engine. He's got Steven laid by his side and a cold beer in his hand. They've got miles and miles of nothing, trees and grassy plains, to either side of them. A road that fades off into the horizon. _

_"Yes, thirty-six year old Stuart Redman. We suspect that the chemicals used in the fire were purchased from his business."_

_"Any news?"_

_"Police are keeping pretty hush but an insider tells me that he's not talking. Won't tell them a damn thing."_

_"How about that," Brendan croons, laughs, turns his head across the windscreen to watch the sun soak like gold into Steven's lazy, sprawled body. "I knew I liked that guy."_


	5. KENTUCKY

Notes: I know I said I wouldn't be doing chapter warnings but this chapter in particular is pretty gory, so just a heads up. Also thank you SO much for all your amazing reviews, I'm so thrilled people are reading and enjoying this story! I appreciate the hell every single one of you!

Word Count ~ 4300

* * *

**KENTUCKY**

"_Brendan_ - "

"Shhh, Steven, just - just, shhh - " Brendan dares a brief glance across the bench. Steven's curled up against the door, shivering and pale. Brendan's foot's already to the metal, he can't go any faster. "We'll be there in a few minutes, don't worry. I'm gonna take care of you, okay?" There's no answer and he looks back. "Steven? Answer me."

"Yeah - oh - okay - "

He clenches his fists, white-knuckled, around the steering wheel. Breathes. Tries to stop himself going fucking wild, flinging them off the road into a ditch or something.

"Keep talkin' to me, Steven. Tell me what happened."

"They - they got interested in the car. Two of 'em - two cops - "

He'd left Steven for half a fucking minute. Half a minute to buy a bottle of God-damn water. "Then what?"

"Clocked me. Made me get out, stand against the - against the - "

"Steven!"

" - the door - hands up - I got my gun and got it on the old one - and it was - didn't know what to do - fuckin', no idea what they were doin' - "

"Carry on, Steven. Come on. I wanna know everything," Brendan demands, firm and no room for disagreement. He can keep Steven talking for two more minutes. They're nearly there.

"Youngest was dead twitchy - think he was new. Saw his finger movin' on the tigger an' then that was it - shot me - I shot the old one - "

That's when Brendan had heard the gunfire. Yards away through the dark of the car park and he'd heard two bullets fired and ran, skidded to a halt in front of his worst damn nightmare, two cops, one dead, one fucking terrified and shaking with his gun clumsily trained on his half-slumped and bleeding boy.

Brendan had dealt accordingly.

"Did they have time to radio it in?"

"No - we're good."

That's one weight off. Just one. Right now it seems almost insignificant.

Brendan spots the turning. The car breaks squeal and the tires skid and grind away in the transition from smooth tarmac to loose gravel. He takes them down until he spots the place through the haze of the blurry, silver light from the wide-open sky. It's a picturesque little hunting cabin, alleged once-upon-a-time getaway of John Fox Jr; he'd read about it on a plaque outside the park four days ago, chatted to the guy in green overalls tending to the pretty, red hibiscus bushes.

_"It's just outside of town, keep on Ceder Street, past the river. They rent it out for a couple hundred bucks to tourists. Check with Mary over at Paradise Planning on Main Street. She can hook you up with so much history you won't know what's hit you."_

He flings open the door, grabs a bag from the trunk and climbs the wooden porch to get a look at the lock; piece of piss for a piece of history but he's fucking relieved, gets out his jackknife, long, slender and hooked steel lockpick on one hinge, steadies his shaking hands, breathes and tells himself the quicker he gets this done the more chance Steven has.

It works, shifts and turns until the mechanism clicks and he can kick open the door and toss the bag inside. He jumps the steps, lands heavy on the solid earth, and skids up the against passenger door. When he opens it he has to get to his knees to catch Steven's body before he tumbles out.

"I got you - got you - "

"Bren - " Steven pushes his face into Brendan's neck, shuffles close, curls the fingers of one hand into the material of Brendan's t-shirt.

He gets one arm secured around his back, pulls his body close, gets his other underneath Steven's knees and hauls him up into his arms as careful as he can. There's a patch of coagulating blood across the leather bench. It's moulded to fit the shape of Steven's slumped form.

Brendan holds him tight against his chest and he's trembling in Brendan's arms. "Gonna take care of you, baby. Don't worry about a thing. You'll be good as new by tomorrow."

He mutters soothing words all the way into the cabin, platitudes with the aim of getting Steven listening and paying attention to him, to get him calm and lower his rapidly climbing heart rate. He lays Steven out across the huge, soft-grey sofa and heads to get the bag and turn on every light he can find.

Brendan's patched up wounds before, stitched up a gash here and there, set a broken finger or two. He's inflicted enough to know plenty about organ damage and internal bleeding and shock and sepsis. The bullet wound is in Steven's abdomen, low and far left, far enough that he hopes it's missed anything major. Steven's still alive, that's gotta count for something.

The bag's got codeine and whiskey and needles and thread and he kneels by the sofa, gets out everything, hands two pills to Steven and holds his neck whilst he washes them down with alcohol, fucking stupid but it's all Brendan's got to make this easier and he _has _to make it easier. He bunches up Steven's soaked-red t-shirt, looks at the centimetres circumference hole, pretty smooth from what he can tell but there's no exit wound and the bullet can't stay in there. There's blood dribbling out of it in spurts to match the pumping of Steven's heart and Brendan chokes on the thick tang of iron, his own stomach aching in response like his body's trying to shoulder some of Steven's pain.

He takes out cotton padding and antiseptic fluid, smell of it so harsh and pungent he could gip on it, so sharp he can _feel _how it's going to sting. He leans his body over Steven, looks into his glazed, fluttering eyes and he picks up the cross at his chest, brings it, shaking, to his lips and presses a pleading prayer against it. Then he braces one bent arm across Steven's chest before he pours half the bottle across the wound.

Steven screams and _screams_ and then chokes on it, seizes under Brendan's body, turns his face away, breath hitching and sobbing out of him until he gets a handle on it, calms down, pulls in long and heaving, ragged breaths. Brendan holds him down through it, soothes him with soft muttering, _you're okay, I got you,_ until Steven's eyes find his and they're clear, no pain-haze, completely alert. He's lucid, heart pounding powerfully against Brendan's arm, most likely the adrenaline kicking in, making him sharp and aware. He raises his hands and digs his fingers into Brendan's forearm and elbow.

His face is pinched tight with pain, teeth gritted, lips pressed together. He's drip-white and Brendan doesn't know if it's shock or blood loss or both.

"Y'okay?"

"M'a fuck."

Brendan breathes a laugh, fucking relief. "Gonna get the bullet out, okay?"

"Better be jokin' - "

"I'm funnier than that, Steven. Come on." Steven moans, pitiful sound. "It's okay, hey - do you trust me?" He nods but he clearly doesn't want to right now. Even less so when Brendan pulls out the jackknife.

"Whiskey," Steven sighs out, holds out a hand and Brendan touches the bottle back to his lips and helps him drink it down, gulp after gulp.

He strokes his hand through Steven's sweat-damp hair, waits a few minutes for the alcohol and painkillers to kick in properly. He switches the knife across to the longest, thinnest point and climbs across Steven's body to straddle his hips, leans in and kisses Steven's lips softly and whispers, "I'm sorry," before he holds him back down with one arm firm across him and pushes the steel underneath Steven's skin.

He cries out and tries to arch under Brendan's solid weight, scratches at Brendan's forearm, gouges his nails in so sharp Brendan knows he's bleeding now, too, fucking glad of it, wants to bleed with his boy, should have been there, protecting him, should be the one with the fucking hole in him.

Brendan feels the knife touch something hard and he ducks closer to get a better look, moves the tip across where he can feel the bullet and tries to make it catch enough to pull it out. He gets it, some kind of groove or dent or lip, and he feels the thing dislodge from tense muscle. It slides up slow and Steven rides it out, clings to him and sobs through it, _fuck _and _please _and _Brendan, _all unbearable, every word like a leather strap trashing and embedding itself in his skin like punishment and finally Brendan sees the glinting metal and edges it all the way out.

Blood wells over in a gush and he gathers handfuls of padding and presses down tight to soak it up. He was careful, he hasn't hit any arteries, but it's almost never ending. Steven's lungs heave in breath, head rolled back, tiny whimpers tearing out of him and Brendan watches in horror as more colour drains out of his skin with every drop of leeching blood. If he loses too much they're fucked; Brendan doesn't have the equipment to transfuse him.

He talks Steven through the longest, most agonising minutes of his life. He talks until the flood abates, until he can see it turn sticky around the wound and clump in the drenched cotton. He whispers soothing words and aims for distraction - _what d'you call a fly with no wings? A walk. What d'you call a man with a spade on his head? Doug - _and Steven starts to loosen up, rolls his eyes and gives Brendan shaky smiles and calms, rise and fall of his chest slowing to something like normal.

Brendan sags forwards, shaky with relief, and carefully rests his forehead against Steven's.

"I gotta stitch you up now, I'm so sorry," he says softly.

Steven's eyes flutter shut and he moans, tips his face against Brendan's, nuzzles his nose, presses their lips close, whispers, "it's okay, just do it."

Brendan nods against him, kisses him, gentle and clinging. He clenches his fists tightly, tries to wring out the tremor that's set into his very bones, and bends the needle between his fingers until it curves and then threads it with cotton. He cringes through Steven's flinch when he pulls the bloodied cotton away from the bullet hole, holds him down again whilst he rinses him out with more disinfectant fluid and tries to push aside the the way his subconscious catalogues every one of Stevens cries. He soaks everything in antiseptic, pours it over his own hands and dries himself and the slippery needle on sterile gauze.

There's no good way to start so he just does. He pushes and pops the needle underneath the skin at the bottom of the hole and pulls, feels the cotton grating through Steven's flesh, feels Steven's muscles tensing under the palm he has flat against his ribcage, point of contact and comfort as well as a way for Brendan to monitor the fluttering beat of his erratic heart.

Steven whimpers, tiny, desperate sounds, and squeezes his eyes shut and Brendan only hears and sees these things in his peripheral, his focus narrowed and fixed on the task in front of him. Stitch him up. Make him whole. No more blood is getting out of his boy tonight. He's not losing one more gram of him, one more drop of his life.

It doesn't take long, the hole is small, but by the time he's finished, Steven's shivering and half conscious. Brendan gives him one last splash of disinfectant, wipes away the red and sticky stain setting into Steven's skin, all across his stomach, around his side, until he's as clean as Brendan's gonna get him, and covers the wound with a square bandage.

"Steven, hey - " He cups Steven's neck with both his hands, leans over him but keeps his body weight off his stomach, strokes his thumbs across Steven's cheekbones.

Steven drags open his eyes, takes a good five seconds to focus in on Brendan and his delayed awareness frightens him. His skin's cool against Brendan's hands and he's pale as Brendan's ever seen him, white as paper, looks like a ghost, fading out like he's disappearing before Brendan's very eyes. If he goes into shock -

Brendan thinks he might be close already.

There's not a lot he can do. He climbs down the sofa, it's fucking huge, wide and long and L shaped, and pulls Steven out of his jeans. They're too tight and they'll cut off circulation of whatever blood he's got left. His t-shirt is soaked in blood and Brendan hates the idea of him uncomfortable so pulls him out of that, too, Steven completely and terrifyingly pliant in his arms. He roots in the bag and pulls out one of his own t-shirts, soft and grey and loose, and holds Steven whilst he weakly pushes his arms into the sleeves.

"It's okay, Steven. You're gonna be alright. Gonna let you rest now, okay?" Steven nods blearily and Brendan kisses him once. "I'm gonna be here but I need to go find somethin' to keep you warm. I'm right here, okay?"

He hurls himself up the pale, pine-wood stairs behind the sofa. They lead up onto a balcony that overlooks the living room, three doors lining the back wall and the first he goes in is a double bedroom. He rips the duvet off the bed and throws it over the railings, grabs a bunch of pillows and tosses them, too, and then tears back down to grab the lot. He puts a pillow under Steven's head carefully, puts two more under his legs to elevate them.

Finally, he throws the duvet over Steven's shivering body and wraps it tight, presses it into the sofa with his forearms at either side of Steven's shoulders.

Steven gazes up at him, slack and slow but basically lucid, scant inches of space between them that feels like a mile because any space right now is _too much_. He takes a deep, laboured breath and whispers, "think I'll live?" It hits Brendan low like a sucker punch to his gut and he exhales roughly, head falling against Steven's shoulder because he's suddenly gone weak, body overtaken with lethargy as adrenaline leeches out of him all of a sudden like his plugs been pulled, life-support flicked off at the switch. "Bren - it's okay. I'm okay."

He rolls his too-heavy body onto the sofa, curls on his side against Steven, wraps one arm across his covered chest and Steven makes room for him on the pillow, turns his head so their noses touch, so Brendan can breathe his air.

"I thought - " he eventually manages to choke out.

"Brendan, shhh," Steven hushes him, voice hoarse and barely-there. He kisses the tip of Brendan's nose softly. "Look at me. I'm fine."

"I can't lose you."

"You won't."

"How d'you know that?"

"Because," he breathes, exhaustion taking hold of him now, eyes fluttering slowly shut. "Because if you're alive, I'm alive. 'Til death, remember?"

Steven's chest steadies out into even sleep underneath his arm and Brendan doesn't dare shut his eyes, doesn't dare look away from Steven's face, his lips and nose and the charcoal smudge of his eyelashes fanning against his cheek. Steven's out like a light and Brendan finally feels the rush of almost-grief crash against his crumbling walls, tide almost too powerful to hold back but he does, can hold for a little while longer. There's moisture on his face and the uncontrollable tremble of his mouth and he catalogues it, sorts through it like he's doing filing and pushes it down and back and bottles it.

He'll uncork it soon enough.

He gives himself enough time to soak up energy from Steven's living, solid and breathing presence, to make sure he's deep enough asleep that he won't wake up when Brendan's not there, and then gets up carefully. The stairs creak under his feet and he finds the bathroom, third door on the left. He's a sight in the mirror, hollow and haunted look about him like he's some shell-shocked war veteran just staggering home from his first tour of duty. Steven's blood covers him, caked into his jeans and shirt and fucking skin and he runs the tap until it's scalding hot, takes soap and scrubs at his hands and arms until he's pink and sore.

He strips off his clothes and kicks them into the corner, wants them as far away from him as possible and there's patches of red like wine stains spotted across his entire fucking chest and stomach. His hands shake and he has to fight to stop from scratching his nails into his skin and tearing strips out himself.

Hold on to it. Breathe through it. Reign it in and fucking _use _it.

His control holds fucking steady as stone, _just a bit longer,_ and Brendan goes back to Steven's side, still resting, still warm and safe and perfect, and he shuffles through the bag to find something he doesn't mind ruining, ripped pair of jeans and plain black t-shirt. There's the ones in the bathroom upstairs but he won't wear Steven's blood for this. The taint he's about to cover himself in doesn't deserve to touch any part of Steven's life, not again.

He slips out into the night, cloying, warm evening air like a heavy, woollen blanket over his body. The air buzzes and writhes with the sound of crickets and cicadas, seems to move with specks of dancing light, biting, flying insects in rolling synergy across the landscape.

There's a dull and muffled thudding coming from the car and Brendan stalks over to it. Against the heat of the night he feels like metal. He feels cold and impregnable, a walking, breathing weapon of steel. His mind is carefully blank. He can't afford to lose himself too quickly.

He pops the trunk and stares down at the bound and gagged man. He peers up at Brendan with wide, watering eyes and a strangled shriek around the material bundled into his mouth. Brendan watches him blink and squirm and groan. He soaks it in and lets it drive him like force, lets it drip through his calm veneer and catch and spark and fuel the fire of his anger. It comes like a slow boil, bubbles and expands and burns bright and hot.

"Can't hear you there, mate. What was that?" he asks softly and the man's throat clicks, sounds painful, around the gag.

" - orry - I in't - et me go - ease"

Brendan nods, head jerking, muscles tense and twitchy, now. "Ah - right. Okay." He tries out a smile, feels it turn up one corner of his mouth, aches on his face; not happening. "I'm gonna say, no."

He reaches down and grabs the cops tied hands, hauls him out of the boot and onto the dusty ground where he rolls, coughs and splutters where he lands, curled up on his side. Brendan pulls out Steven's gun, handle smooth ivory against his rough palm, and angles it into his face.

"I should kill you with this. Only seems right you should die by his weapon." The cop screams around the cloth and it sounds like ripping paper. Brendan hunches down, rests his elbows against his knees, considers him, inhales his fear. Then he pulls out the jackknife and cuts the bonds holding the guy's legs. "Get up, no sudden moves." Cop struggles upright, chest heaving, eyes weeping a steady stream of tears. Brendan grips his shoulder and spins him, pushes the barrel into his spine and growls, "walk."

They pick a path through the low, tangled up shrubs and then into the forest proper. Brendan guides him by the light from the Milky Way, shimmering white glow almost enough to illuminate the entire area, moon as bright as the damn day sun out here, until they get to some kind of clearing, far enough away that he can't see the lights from the cabin anymore. He's away from Steven and it adds to his itch, adds to his agitation, every roiling emotion curling together carefully like one of his chemical mixtures until he figures out which combination he needs to make this moment just _right_.

He needs rage and hatred. He needs fear and love and devotion. He needs to feel the full force of the forever he almost lost, that yawning edge at the brink of a future filled with suffocating darkness.

Brendan throws Cop to the ground again, feels the first thrill of satisfaction at how his knees crack against the solid earth. It's not enough, though. It's just the start. He kicks up dirt as he strides around to the guy's front, widens his stance and taps his foot and looks into his terrified, confused and wet-streaked face. He's wearing a badge that Brendan hadn't paid much attention to before but now he squints at it, makes out the name.

"Really?" he drawls, eyebrow raised. "Okay, then. Hey - _Buddy_." Buddy pulls in breath through his nose, sniffles and makes these choked off little noises, music to Brendan's ears. "You shot my boy, Buddy. Now we got a problem."

Buddy shakes his head furiously, tries to shout around the cloth, " - ought he 'as 'onna 'ill me - "

Brendan holds up a finger and shushes him. "Buddy, please. It's rude to talk with your mouth full; you're making me uncomfortable. Where was I? Right - like I said, shot my boy. He nearly died, tonight. Now I ain't a monster, Buddy, so I'm gonna enlighten you, gonna tell you that you're _lucky _that my boy didn't die tonight. Wanna know why?" Buddy stares up at him, fucking blank like a gormless kid with a difficult question and Brendan whispers, "this is the part where you nod, by the way."

"Mmmmhhh - " Buddy muffles, nods shakily.

"If Steven had died tonight then there wouldn't of been a cop in this country able to stop me hunting down every last member of your family, and I mean _every _last one, we're talkin' great Auntie Irene thrice removed on your cousin's side and her grandkid's dog, and ripping their hearts out," Brendan tells him, a low warning, bleeding hot and rough with his barely reigned back fury, feels it crack through and begin to deliver. He can't keep at bay much longer; his fingers twitch with his muscles trying to override his control. Buddy's in a panic again and Brendan's almost done with this pathetic display, wants to give Buddy something to _really_ fucking panic about. "Shut up for fucks sake. Steven's alive. Like I said - you're a lucky boy. There's still a debt to be paid, though. Eye for an eye. Maybe blood for blood's more apt."

He presses the sole of his boot against Buddy's chest and kicks him backwards, topples him sprawling onto his back with his bound hands under him awkwardly. He aims Steven's gun low and pulls the trigger and Buddy screams, sound ripping out of him, wounded and shredded like it's forcing out through a cheese grater, and pulls his shattered knee up against his body like it might ease the pain, like he might be able to protect it if it's close. His body's natural reaction. Movement probably hurts like a mother fucker but it's all instinct, ingrained muscle reflexes.

Brendan tosses the gun to the side, far enough away from grabbing hands, and bends over, bats Buddy's broken leg away impatiently and plants both knees into the ground, bracketing his hips. He pushes one hand firm against Buddy's chest, slips his other into his pocket and around his knife, and bends close, lets Buddy get a good focus on his face before he says, "like I said - only fit you should die by Steven's weapon."

He drags out the knife and holds it clear in front of him, right where Buddy can get a good look at it. Brendan's going to tear chunks out of him until every one of Steven's screams, every single tear he's sobbed, every single damaged nerve and drop of blood and torn skin cell he's endured tonight, has been accounted for. A debt paid in full.

"Not the gun, though, Buddy," he breathes, growls, feels the rage and cruelty swell and take hold like a rising wave. "Me."

*/*/*

_"You've been ages. I was gettin' worried. Come 'ere."_

_Brendan drops a bag on the kitchen table and does as he's told. He leans over Steven's sprawled body, plants both hands on the sofa arm, and slides his tongue into Steven's warm and waiting mouth._

_"Sorry," he murmurs against Steven's lips. "Mary wouldn't shut the fuck up. Good news though - " He pulls Steven up and throws himself down onto the sofa, and pulls Steven's head back into his lap."Nobody's booked to rent this place for another three weeks. Thought we could stay until you're strong enough for a long drive."_

_"What if someone comes sniffin' round?"_

_Brendan cards his fingers into Steven's hair, scrapes his nails against Steven's scalp and pulls on the strands softly. "I'll deal with them."_

_"Sounds like a plan."_

_"Don't it? Although - I hear it's gettin' a bit dangerous round here at the moment. You'll never guess what Mary told me."_

_"Ooh, don't leave me hanging. What?"_

_"Well - two nights ago a cop got shot outside Dollar General."_

_Steven gasps around a wry grin. "You don't say!"_

_"Yep. Police are in a right state over it. They're blaming on gangs, for now."_

_"Gangs of Franklin, Kentucky?"_

_"That's not the weirdest part. His partner? Just up and vanished into thin air."_

_"Oh, 'eck. Reckon summat really gruesome's 'appened to him?"_

_Brendan bends to press a smiling kiss against his boy's warm and living skin. "I'd put money on it, Steven."_


	6. TENNESSEE

Notes: Cover art by the amazing teiubesc8 on Tumblr. Thank you so much for letting me use it, lovey. It's so gorgeous!

Word Count ~ 4600

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**TENNESSEE **

Brendan hits out. He feels the bones of his fist crack and shatter bone in return.

He hops back, shakes himself loose, breathes. Long. Smooth. Blood rising like a swelling orchestra. Veins dilated, pumping, rushing red under his skin, flowing, gushing heat. Frank looks up at him through the blood rolling over his eyelids, face shadowed in the faint lampost light, faint circle it creates around them, around the scattered circle gathered with Brendan and his new friend at the centre.

Sometimes he fights for money but no money has changed hands tonight. Sometimes he fights for fun but there's nothing sporting about what he's doing right now. Sometimes he fights because someone thinks they can take him but tonight it's like he's wearing a sign - do not fuck with - and not one fucker has been cocky enough to beg him for a beating.

Except this one but he hadn't begged. He'd gotten Brendan's attention for a whole other reason.

Tonight he fights to settle the itch that's been tickling, building in his skin for two and a half weeks like a festering disease. Tonight he fights to make a man bleed for him, to feel the heat of his running blood, the break of his bones and crack of his begging voice.

Frank isn't begging yet, though.

"What's the matter?" Frank calls, thick through his clotting nose. "Somethin' pretty caught your eye?"

Brendan's eyes flick, involuntarily, to Steven. He's leaned up against the wall behind the loose crowd, scowl fixed firmly on his face and watching intently. Brendan can sense darkness and real, raw and fucking palpable anger rolling off him in waves.

"I think it was your eye that got caught, mate," Brendan says calmly. "Ain't that why we're here?"

"Maybe when I'm finished up, he'll get a little more than just my _eye_," Frank spits through a nasty grin.

Frank's fucking huge, got at least three inches on Brendan, broad at the shoulders, thick neck and so much meat on his arms they look like they should be on a butcher's hook. Brendan's glad for every inch. The bigger they are, the more satisfying it is when he puts them down.

"You really don't know when to quit, do you?" Brendan asks.

Frank doesn't like to lose.

Earlier he'd spotted him and his bulky, party-boy type friends. They'd swaggered in like they fucking owned the place, ordered shots and doubles and laughed loud and obnoxious, slammed their glasses down on the table like in the fucking movies. He'd seen Frank's wondering eye catch and pull on Steven where they'd been sat at a tall corner table under the framed Jimmy Reed Live At The Hard Rock Cafe poster even though that isn't where they are, Steven shoving peanuts into Brendan's mouth and guffawing like it was the funniest thing in the world, licking salt of his fingers and then Brendan's lips, smiling and laughing and so fucking gorgeous that Brendan could almost forget what had happened two and a half weeks ago in Franklin.

He'd kept a close eye on Frank, heard the name catcalled loud when he'd gone to the bathroom, _Frank, get me a fucking Jaeger would you? _and later on Brendan had glanced back over his shoulder, his body leaned down across the pool table, just in time to see him stretching up next to where Steven was leant against the bar. He'd towered over, one arm sliding up behind his back across the wood, and Steven had given him one look, quick and disdainful up and down, and fixed his attention back onto Brendan. Frank hadn't taken the hint, or he _had _taken the hint but hadn't _taken _the hint, and he'd leaned in close, said something into Steven's ear that had his eyes darkening, hand inching back into his waistband where Brendan knew his knife was nestled up against his hip.

Brendan had frozen half-way to taking the shot, vision dripping raw red and hot like a blacksmith's forge and _seen_ Frank's hand moving through the air with intent.

Frank had touched him, brushed fingers against his chest, and quick as a pouncing cat, Steven had drawn the blade up against his throat at the exact same time Brendan had cracked his pool cue in half off the side of the table and gripped it tight in one hand like a bat. _Hey, _he'd said to Steven and Steven had looked at him, tremble through his body, hell-fire in his eyes, and he'd stepped back in time for Brendan to throw all his weight into one smooth strike of the cue against Frank's side.

He'd fallen on the floor, coughing, fucking shocked as hell, and Brendan had hunched down, grabbed him by the collar and pulled him close, "you're gonna die for that," and he'd meant it, had planned on cracking Frank's head so hard against the wood floor that his brains had rattled loose, but the bartender had called his own boys down, told them _take this shit somewhere else _and hustled everyone out into the alley round the back.

No police. Not that kind of place.

"Your _boy_ looks like he might appreciate that," Frank says, spits a gob of blood against the floor.

It's half bravado. Steven had held a knife against Frank's neck and he ain't likely to want a repeat of the experience. Still, he's a sore loser, petty and cocky and proud. Not the type to let a humiliation like that go unpunished. Steven's good with weapons but he's still weak from his brush with death, still sore and tender all through his muscles and Frank's got friends here; Brendan just hopes his boy's got an eye out for which ones might be dangerous.

"You're lucky my boydidn't slit your throat." It gets the reaction he wants, flickering uncertainty in Frank's stubborn eyes, question of what _exactly _he's dealing with right now, what he's gotten himself into. Brendan stretches out his fingers, balls his hands back into a fist, tenses his arm, ready, fucking eager. "But he knows me, y'see, Frankie Boy. Knows that I'd prefer to deal with you myself."

Frank swallows. He's worried but he's not terrified, he still doesn't _get_ it. In his wildest dreams he can't imagine the things a man might kill for.

Brendan takes one last look at Steven. Steven against the wall, clinging navy t-shirt, jeans slung low on his hips, fit him over two weeks ago but boy's lost some weight since then, eyes ever-so-slightly sunken and dark-rimmed, shock of blue even brighter against his bruised skin, _painfully_ beautiful in his fragile vulnerability. His attention catches briefly, singing, thrilling _spark _cracking out of control between them, pushes energy into him, a surge of power so strong he can feel it in his bones.

He hasn't fucked Steven in over two weeks, too afraid of hurting him, blood and torn skin and stitches too raw in his memory and even Steven begging hadn't broken through that resolve. He hasn't killed anyone in over two weeks, either, too afraid of leaving Steven's side to do much of anything. Tonight he's going to do both those things. This pressure's been building in him like a steam kettle for too long and he's boiling towards an eruption.

He steps forward, jerks left and Frank startles backwards and right. Brendan's quicker than him and he turns and throws all his weight into the spin, behind his fist and it slams into Frank's side, not tensed because that's not where Frank was expecting it to land. He cries out and staggers and Brendan grips his shoulders and buries his knee in Frank's stomach, follows it up by catching his chin with his fist and sending him sprawling backwards. It's so fucking good, slap of skin and muscle under his assault, muffled cries of well-eaned pain.

He fucking _touched _Steven, he put a hand on him, breathed in his ear, fucking _dared _to try and take his boy in front of him and two and half weeks ago Brendan had - two and a half weeks ago he'd -

Anger courses and runs and he's swollen with it, bloated and reeling, rarely ever feels like he's losing it like this but he's almost blind with dripping red. He strides forwards with intent to kill and the crowd is jostling, louder, murmurs like a wave around him, and he _wants _them to watch this son of a bitch die,a fucking lesson, learn it well or get in line. Brendan kicks him, boot colliding with Frank's face, explosion of blood and teeth and spit, Frank's agonised howl, and Brendan breathes like he's running out of oxygen, brings his leg back for another and then something's happening, he can feel it split seconds before it does, feels something in the air _turn - _

"Brendan!"

Steven's voice -

- and then he's grabbed and stuck, can't move for the hands holding his arms and shoulders, two guys crowding his sides and holding him back, solid like stone, and there's another with a broken bottle materialising over Frank's splayed and bleeding body and Brendan's about to get cut.

It happens so fast he feels winded, tides turned as quick as tides turn, and he feels real fear grip him, shouts at Steven to run and get the fuck away but then he hears it, Steven's voice, low and steady and fucking business, "let him go or I swear to God - "

Every single pair of eyes in the crowd fixes on Brendan's boy, hunched down on the grimy alley floor with Frank pulled up between his spread knees, one hand gripped tight in his hair and bearing his throat to the wicked silver of his knife.

"I will kill him."

Broken bottle boy's eyes go wide as saucers and Steven's judged right, these are Frank's buddies. Everything freezes for long, stretched seconds and then he holds his hands up, doesn't put down the bottle but it's still acquiescence.

Frank's whimpering, gaze still dazed from the beating Brendan just gave him but he knows he's in trouble here. The bite of Steven's blade into his neck is grating, working it's way under his skin and bleeding him ever-so-slightly.

"Hey - kid - this got out of hand, okay? Let's just drop it, no harm done, nobody here has to die," Bottle boy says firmly, knows how to diffuse rough situations.

Steven considers. "Okay. Let him go."

"No way, how do I know you won't just cut Frank?"

"You don't, now let him go."

"Woah, woah - "

And then Frank lets out an almighty screaming, gurgling _horro_r of a fucking sound, desperate and strangled and his fucking blood is bubbling up over Steven's knife and there's chaos like scattering bugs at the stomp of a boot, the crowd vanishing in seconds, just Frank, _dying _and the two guys _still _holding Brendan and Bottle-boy frozen and this one other fucker who Brendan sees, suddenly and with the kind of clarity that only comes with adrenaline and fear-sharpened senses, stick his hand into his jeans and reach -

For the second time - or third, or fourth, _fucking fifth?_ what does he know by this point - someone has a gun on Steven and Brendan feels like he's hulking out or something, completely _gone, _it's fucking over.

He lashes out, stagger the two men, and he's on the guy with the gun before he's even gotten it out of his waistband. He thinks he's called Steven's name, a warning, just fucking deal with this shit, _please, _and he sees Steven ducking Bottle-boy's broken bottle with his heart in his mouth. Brendan wrestles the gun in the guys hand, one shot ricocheting off the grimy, green metal dumpster somewhere off to the left, means trouble if someone's heard it, and he throws his head forward, cracks the bridge of the guy's nose and he goes down.

Brendan swipes the gun, turns and gets it on the biggest of his two touchy-feely-bodyguard buddies although he needn't have bothered, they're slack faced and struck dumb, all meat and nobody's really home. They ain't the brains of the operation.

"Steven - " he calls out, risks a glance over.

Steven's circling Bottle-boy, arm bent across his front and blade angled outwards, and Brendan looks in time to see the guy lurch forwards, Steven dodging him easily and using his opened up posture to slide up real close and sink his knife right up into Bottle-boy's heart. He spits and chokes and breathes ragged, hitching, shallow air and Steven stays close until he drops to his knees, looks him right in the eye as he bleeds him through his blood-pumping organ.

Sirens ring out over the sound of Bottle-boy dying and Brendan calls, _Steven, _again. Shit. The ricocheting bullet didn't go unnoticed. He plugs the three live ones in the head quickly, wipes the gun off and stuffs it into one of the guy's hands, hopes it might buy them some time. Steven's t-shirt is dark but there's blood on his hand and arms and Brendan grips him hard, drags him close and tries to wipe him down with the already damp material.

"You okay?" Steven asks him softly, all liquid, concerned eyes and gentle voiced like _Brendan's_ the one who _didn't _run, that Brendan's the one who nearly got shot _again, _fucking reckless, fucking -

Calm down.

"Fine, come on."

He takes Steven's wrist and pulls him down the alley and onto the dingy back street it opens out onto, grey and grime and smell of rotting food, wash of pale streetlamps shining off the heavy, surrounding stone. They walk, not too fast, not too slow, to one end and Brendan peers out onto the main street but it's no use, whoever called the cops must have seen whatever went down and he can hear the sirens from every direction.

There's a metal fire escape behind, ladder raised, and he jumps up and grabs the bottom rung, drags it down with his weight. He gestures, Steven first, always Steven first, and Steven climbs and Brendan follows. They're at the third landing before he notices the strain Steven's under, pinched and pale with pain from his stomach muscles, and he doesn't so much as whimper and it makes Brendan angry, building and building the slower Steven climbs.

They haul themselves over the top and onto the roof and Brendan goes to one edge and looks out across downtown Nashville. There's police cars skidding to a stop below and Brendan's heart pounds fiercely. Steven's curling in on himself ever-so-slightly, breathing laboured, and Brendan wants to embed his fist in a brick wall.

There's no gaps between the rooftops, just the step-like up and down of different levels like he's in a fucking Mario game. He crowds close to Steven, cups his face with finely trembling hands, strain of what he'd actually like to do, grip him tight and fucking scream at him for being so - for not _fucking _running -

"I'm okay," Steven says before Brendan can make his voice work past his swollen throat.

He wants to rail and rage, fucking break things, everything in the entire world that's not his Steven.

"Come on."

He grips Steven's hand and makes his way across the rooftop, small climb up to the next building and he gets up first, pulls Steven up after him. The next is lower by about five feet, quite a jump, and Brendan takes it and drops into a roll, force of it rattling up through his body. He stands under the brick while Steven sits at the edge, holds his arms out which makes Steven actually smile and make a crack that Brendan is not in the mood for, _don't drop me, will you, _and Brendan gives him a look, daren't speak. Steven narrows his eyes, sighs, gets it.

Brendan catches and supports his drop but Steven still groans, low sound punched out of him, and Brendan clings for long seconds they can't afford, holds him close and feels the shake of his body, the heaving breaths.

There's one more building and then an alley and they take it, climb down to the next fire escape and luckily it's stairs this time but they fucking rattle like a hot oven under their haste to get down them.

Brendan parked the car half a mile away, a few blocks west of the centre, quieter part of town and they walk it in silence, sharp lookout for any trouble. They don't waste time getting in and Brendan pulls them out of there quickly, road screeching under his tires. He drives them to their motel, tells Steven in a clipped voice to wait in the car while he packs up their stuff, haven't really had any time to get settled yet, only got here earlier tonight, and he shoves it in the trunk, gets back in and drives until he can't anymore, until the warring, rolling emotions in his stomach make his hands shake beyond his ability to keep hold of the wheel.

He pulls them up in the middle of nowhere, never-ending remote road, lined on each side by thick forest, no streetlights out here, just the blue moon up ahead washing the tarmac in cold white, shimmering light. It feels like a spot from a horror film, Brendan half expects the howling of werewolves off in the distance, might even welcome them at this point.

They sit in tense quiet and Brendan breathes through his nose, tries to get enough oxygen in him to stop feeling dizzy. He needs -

"Brendan - "

"Don't," he says sharply. He needs Steven not to speak. "Get out of the car."

In his peripheral he sees Steven's expression, concern and understanding and pale and tight with how he aches and _fuck _Brendan's losing it again. Steven opens the door and climbs out, shuts it and walks around to the front like he _knows._

That's all he can take, every single one of his nerves _screaming _at him for _something. _He flings the driver door open, strides around and meets Steven halfway, meets his calm concern with untempered fury.

"Brendan - "

"Why didn't you run?" he grinds out, voice like scraping road-burn. "Why didn't you _run!?_"

"He was gonna bottle you!"

"They had a gun and they fucking - he pulled a gun on you - _again - _d'you know how close I came to - "

"Hey - "

Steven reaches out, tries to touch his jaw, but he can't cope with it. He slaps Steven's hand away, spins him and throws him down across the car bonnet, his palms splaying flat against the gleaming black, the reflecting moonlight. He plasters himself up Steven's back, voice a growl in his ear, can't look at him when he says, "fucking reckless as _fuck, _gonna get yourself killed and then what?" He pushes one hand against the denim at Steven's crotch, rubs his palm, creates a friction that makes Steven tip his head back against Brendan's shoulder and moan. He's hard in seconds, Brendan hasn't touched him in weeks, and he's already jerking against the pressure. "You don't get to die - "

He chokes on the words and gives up on them.

Brendan rags at Steven's button and fly, drags his jeans and boxers down until they fall to his knees, slicks up his fingers with spit and works them roughly into Steven's body, pushes and twists and scissors until he's stretched out and keening, pushing back, fucking himself on Brendan's fingers and begging, _fuck, Brendan, please, fuck me_. Brendan's wound up so tight he could scream, dick pushing against his own jeans like torture, and he grinds himself against Steven's arse as he fingers him open until he can't take it anymore.

He flicks his button, takes himself and slicks up his cock with spit, messy and sloppy and fucking amazing, angles himself against Steven's hole and pushes home. They both breath through the slide and he isn't careful, Steven's ragged pleading, the desperate need of them both just singing through his veins and he just can't be, can't control how much he needs to expel this energy, this twisting, clawing pressure trying to tear its way out of his body.

Brendan fucks him, punishingly hard because that's almost what this is, punishment and he doesn't know who's or for what but that's what it feels like, and Steven cries out, clenches around him, _yeah _and _God, right there, Brendan, don't stop, please, _and Brendan can't control his voice, the high, whimpering cries that keep spilling from his throat. He needs more contact, more affirmation of Steven, alive and perfect and his, and he tangles his fingers through Steven's own on the bonnet, spreads his arms up and out until he's bent forward, head hanging between his shoulders with Brendan's weight against his back, couldn't get much closer together than they are in this moment.

He feels Steven's orgasm curl up through his body, through his tensing thighs and the shudder up his spine and the goosebumps under his lips across the back of Steven's neck and Brendan lets go, fucks Steven until they both come, explosion behind his eyes and sound like rolling thunder in his ears, Steven's voice like a broken, ravaged thing torn from his lungs. Brendan's helpless to the wave after wave of release, like every string of tension in his body is shrieking out of him, and he clings onto Steven like they're drowning, keeping each afloat and alive.

He breathes in the following silence, wraps his arms tight around Steven's middle and melts like warm honey against his back. The muscles against him tremble and he knows Steven's feeling the ache of his injury through the hazy aftershocks of his orgasm and Brendan pulls him back against his body to take his weight, wrangles him back into his fallen jeans, slides his fingers under Steven's blood-caked t-shirt and trails them up and down his skin, soft and slow, soothing.

"I can't lose you," he murmurs into the side of Steven's neck, calming pulse under his words.

Steven turns into him, eyes closed, sweet and intimate. "He was gonna bottle you, might 'ave killed you."

"Shoulda left me."

"Are you kiddin' me? Are you actually - " Steven shuffles out of his embrace, turns to look at him, close and fucking furious. "Who's job d'you think it is to keep _you _safe?"

It's like he can't comprehend the question, just sees flashes of scenes in his head like a flip book, Steven with a knife against Frank's throat, _let him go. _Steven in Brendan's kitchen back home, back in Chester, blood dripping from his hands and body, calm focus on his face, absolute rock-steady certainty. Brendan's father sprawled in a pool of his own blood, torn apart by the knife Steven would carry with him ever since. He'd looked Brendan in the eye, said "you're mine, Brendan. He'll never 'ave you, never hurt you again," and Brendan had gone to him like he'd been drawn by an invisible force, sheer inexorable tug of connection. He'd cupped Steven's face and kissed him, tang of blood thick in the air, cloying and metallic and heady, pushed Steven back against the dining room table and fucked him 'til he'd screamed, feet away from Seamus' mangled, red-splashed body. He'd sobbed out his relief into Steven's throat, overwhelmed by the most powerful, mind-blowing sense of freedom, first time in his life he'd ever experienced something like real absolution.

Steven had held him close and tight and rocked him, stroked his hair, whispered promises into his skin, _I'll never leave you, I love you, kill anyone who tries to take you away from me, never._

"You think I could lose you? I'd throw myself off the nearest bridge, Brendan."

Brendan pulls him close, arms around him again, feels Steven's warmth seep into him, restore him. "No, you wouldn't - " he says and sees Steven already ready to protest, fucking can't keep his mouth shut and let Brendan finish, _ever. _"Ah - " he scolds, pokes Steven's side until he squirms. "Let me finish, would you? You wouldn't 'cause it's not flashy enough. I think you're more of a walking into a police station with a loaded shotgun and killing as many fuckers as you could before getting shot type of guy, myself."

Steven goes loose in his grip, chuffs a breathy laugh and slides his arms around Brendan's neck. "Alright, I'd do that. Tell me to run away when you're in danger again and I might do it anyway just out of annoyance."

"You wouldn't bloody listen to me, anyway. Stubborn as fuck."

"Umm, pot, kettle?"

He kisses Steven, cling of lips, croons, "no way, I ain't nearly as bad as you."

"The other day I 'ad to literally roll you out of bed and onto the floor so you'd go turn the light out."

"I was tired - "

"I 'ad to emotionally blackmail you into goin' to fetch me a cup of coffee."

"It was _two blocks_ and you're _obsessed _with those fucking Starbucks cappuccinos, they take about five hours to make - "

"How long has it taken you to fuck me since the shooting?"

Brendan rolls his eyes to distract from the rolling in his stomach at that word but he probably has to concede that one. "Yeah, okay - smart-arse."

Steven grins, pleased as punch, and Brendan put a solid arm at his back for support and lays him down across the car bonnet, leans over him with his elbows on the metal. The moonlight shines off Steven's skin, off the gleaming black of the car, off the tarmac around them and the green of the forest and the windscreen above Steven's head. He's surrounded in white glow, swallowed up and washed into peace with it, warm night and warm bodies under him, warm Steven and warm car engine. He dips low, kisses Steven open and slick, slip-slide of tongues, lazy and almost-content.

He can feel things changing, feel the stakes getting higher, feel the stringing tension thickening in the air every time he takes a breath. Day by day they're heading for a climax, some huge and destructive future, death or captivity an ever-present, looming shadow. It's there in his peripheral, sharpening into something solid and real.

For now, though, it can't touch him. He and Steven in the haze of moonlight, this bubble of tranquillity.

For now they're okay.

*/*/*

_"A massacre, that's the only way I can describe it."_

_Brendan's got his foot heavy on the pedal, scenery of the I90 flashing past too quick to make out thing._

_"What exactly did you see?"_

_"I heard the gun go off and took a look outside and called the cops. There was two of them - they just stabbed and shot five men like they had Satan in them!"_

_"That's astonishing, Mrs Beatty. You must have been terrified."_

_"Oh, I was! I prayed to Jesus that they wouldn't see me lookin'."_

_It's early, night on the knife-edge of day, sun rising and weak light blurring over the trees and stretching landscape, steep, burnt-orange cliffs looming up over the horizon as they pass from Tennessee to Alabama, miles and miles of dusty wasteland, sparse, yellow-turning, dry grass._

_"The two man have been linked to a trail of bloody crimes all through America, now officially an FBI investigation."_

_Steven sleeps in the passenger side, curled up against the door, soft and peaceful._

_"Unnamed as of yet, if anyone spots two men of their descriptions don't hesitate to get far away and call the authorities."_

_He eats up the road, fast and smooth. It winds around the hills up ahead, disappears and fades from view and he follows it, lets go and puts his trust in their freedom, lets it take him wherever it leads._


	7. ALABAMA

Wow, here we are. It's been a while, I know! Thanks for being so patient with me everyone and I hope that this rather long chapter will make up for my absence. Next chapter will not be nearly as long (EDIT - as in take as much time to publish, not word count wise), I can promise you that with 100% certainty.

Word Count ~ 8400

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**ALABAMA**

"In 1902, Dr. Luther Leonidas Hill performed the first open heart surgery in the Western Hemisphere by suturing a stab wound in a young boy's heart."

Brendan aims. "Nice."

_Crack._

"Between 1817 and 1819, Old Saint Stephens was the first terrorist capital of Alabama."

_Crack. _

" - what?"

"Oh - shit, sorry, _territorial_, not terrorist. Did you know that Hitler's typewriter's at the Hall of History in Bessemer?"

"I didn't know that, Steven, no."

_Crack._

"You do now."

"Come here."

"In a minute, listen to this," and Steven actually _clears his fucking throat _and everything. "Alabama is the only state with all major natural resources needed to make iron and steel."

"Well then, that's our day sorted; got a shovel?"

"You know we do," Steven says through a grin. He's sprawled across a blanket on the grass next to the river, right where he can catch the faint mist of splashing water over glittering, wet slate; he's wearing nothing but jeans slung low on his hips, Brendan's silver chain and the Alabama tourist leaflet casting shadows over his face. And the small, circular scar. Always the scar. "Thought you liked a bit of culture, anyway."

"You call that culture, Steven?"

"Well," he scoffs. "What do you call it, then?"

"I call it tacky tourism." _Crack. _"Now," Brendan drawls, low and steady, "come here."

It's the tone of voice that brokers no argument, the one that gets heat pooling in Steven's belly and his eyes turning liquid-black like hot tarmac. He can rarely refuse Brendan when he makes a demand like that and Brendan's made many, enough to test that theory anyway; enough to know it gets him swallowing down all that spit gathering in his mouth like a Pavlovian response even if that's not what Brendan's going for right now. Steven stands and stalks in one fluid motion like he doesn't possess joints, like he's some sort of winding creature, a snake, smooth and graceful. When he's a foot away, Brendan holds out the gun, _Steven's _gun, actually, and Steven takes it.

There's the air of the bored about him but Brendan doesn't give a shit; he's calmed down some over the last week since Nashville but he's healing at Steven-pace, knitting back together slowly like his boy's broken skin, and Steven's physical scar's like a messy reflection of the working insides of Brendan's head.

"You know I don't need target practice," Steven sighs but he sidles up close anyway, right into the mould of Brendan's body where he's sat, splay-legged, on a thick, bowed-up tree root.

"Be cocky all you want but you weren't quick enough to put down sergeant trigger happy before he put a hole in you," Brendan says, rough and quick and cutting, and it's a low blow, one Steven visibly baulks at, entire body tensing up into stubborn indignity which is kinda what he wanted, for Steven to get pissed off and show Brendan what he's capable of. Truth be told and unreasonable, he knows, but he just wants Steven to calm his constant thrumming heart with _something,_ some promise it's not fair for Brendan to demandbecause living on his nerves like this is fucking exhausting.

Steven's eyes slant over his shoulder into Brendan for long seconds that feel heavy with a tired, old argument he's sick and fed up of and then he brings up the gun, fingers around the handle, one on the trigger, other hand cupping his wrist steady, and he cracks off three quick shots into the picture Brendan's pinned to a tree 100 yards away.

He spreads his hands over Steven's hips, briefly presses his thumbs into the two sweet little dips at the base of his back, then shifts him out of the way so he can hop off the root and go check the target. Two good shots, one wide and bedded in the bark a couple of inches next to Gary Neville's already pretty shot-up face. Steven's got an eyebrow cocked when he walks back over, gun presumably clicked safe and hanging by his thigh loosely.

"Got a couple in his mouth," he calls from half-way back.

"S'where I was aiming," Steven grins and Brendan chuckles. "Can I go lie back down now or d'you need me to do a few push ups as well?" Steven's being facetious, he's gonna lie down again no matter what Brendan says. "It's too hot to be standin' up."

It's true, the farther south they go, naturally, the hotter it gets. It's not just the heat, it's the cloying humidity, the sensation of being coated, constantly, in slick. Brendan's wearing a black t-shirt that feels damp across his back and Steven's chest and stomach shine when the sun catches him through the leafy green-yellow canopy latticed over their little oasis.

It makes his body feel like a hum, a low, resonating sound of sensation, and the damp amplifies it, makes him vibrate until he can't sit still. They've been on the beaten track for days 'cause he's got that irrational, crawling feeling of the police breathing down his neck but he's contrary, too, got that itch to _move, _swagger into some open air where everyone can see his face and make a few good guys suffer for this slight on their freedom. It's duplicity at its worst, he _wants _to fuck someone's shit, wants to watch Steven bleed a a million bodies like some twisted Fleet Street barber, but he wants to hide, too, wants to wrap Steven in a blanket and lock him in the car and never let another soul set eyes on him ever again.

He can't bridge the gap and he's watching Steven carefully watch him unravel with increasingly erratic temper. It both scares the shit out of him and makes his blood pulse in anticipation for the moment Steven snaps and fucking _does _something to try and either fix it or fuck it up further and both would be a welcome reprieve from this weird, too-taut, twilight inbetween.

Steven holds the gun back out to him and Brendan goes like he's aiming to grab it but instead he extends quickly, grips Steven's wrist and _pulls _him, completely off-guard, in a skid to his knees.

"Better?" Brendan growls and Steven smirks up at him just the right side of dangerous.

Then, he throws himself back into his hands in the grass and kicks one of Brendan's legs right out from under him. He goes down to one knee and flat palm against the solid ground between Steven's ankles and a little breathless but he recovers quickly, grips the waistband of Steven's jeans with his hooked fingers and drags him close roughly, thighs tightening over Brendan's hips and half-hard line of his dick pressed up against Brendan's own.

Steven's not going down, though, and he grips Brendan's t-shirt, hauls himself up and into his folded lap. He claws at Brendan savagely so he grabs both Steven's wrists, pulls them outwards to arch his body close, spots the flash of silver, gun still closed in Steven's fingers and that's _good, _Steven never drops his weapon.

Brendan cocks his head back to look into Steven's face then pushes his hips up enough to get his attention. "Shoot now, you cocky little fucker."

Steven laughs low in his throat, narrows his eyes and grinds down hard. "Piece of piss." Brendan loosens the hold on the hand with the gun and feels Steven stretch an arm over him shoulder, watches him tip his cheek against the top of it to aim and the cool focus on his face. One loud _crack_, the scattering of whatever birds have settled since the last shots went off, and Steven's bright, smug grin. "Right in Gary's eye."

Brendan palms at the slick base of Steven's spine, drags him closer to rub denim against denim, friction and rushing blood until Steven's biting his lip to muffle a moan. "Again."

He's less cocky this time, shakier, eyelashes fluttering when he aims and Brendan doesn't let up with his hands over hot skin, feels the shock of the second shot ringing out of the barrel, right through Steven's body and into his own rattling bones 'cause Steven's not bracing it like he should.

He whispers a soft, "fuck," into Brendan's hairline.

Brendan presses his lips to Steven's collarbone, licks up the pooling sweat and growls, "again," against his skin.

Steven breathes and goes tense and Brendan feels him lining it up, trying not to fuck up again, and as well as that, he's feeling pretty fucking smug about the whole affair if he's perfectly honest. He'd quite like to fuck Steven over the tree root above them and see how much practice it'd take to get Steven shooting bullseyes with Brendan's dick in him. They'd probably never use that particular skill but it never hurts to be prepared and their lives are - unpredictable, to say the least.

"Wait, wait," Steven murmurs and taps at his shoulder urgently.

It cuts through Brendan's pleasure-haze and he pulls back with a jolt of adrenaline. "What is it?"

"There's a car, listen."

When he strains, he catches the low rumble of an engine. "Tell me it's not fuckin' police, _please_."

There's a few heart-seizing seconds where he calculates with fucking scientific precision, every single fucking escape route out of these woods. Then Steven relaxes in his grip and tips back to look at him. "Nah, just a couple of kids, I think." Brendan exhales a shaky sigh and Steven's expression goes soft and kind of worry-sweet, another thing Brendan's had turned on him more than a handful of times over the past few days and one that up until now he's kind of wilfully ignored. "Brendan - "

"What?" he asks, defensive as hell already.

"Don't _what _me," Steven snaps - oh, _good, _the tempers back - and shuffles off him, stands up and cracks his spine. Brendan rolls his eyes and _yeah, _maybe he's acting like a moody teenager right now 'cause he, stubbornly, really doesn't wanna get off the floor so instead he leans back on his hands and looks out to the stream like he's deep in thought or some rockstar shit. "You're gonna give yourself an heart attack if you don't calm down."

"Thanks, Doctor Hay."

"I mean it."

Brendan says nothing else and there's a ten second reprieve that stretches out forever, a place where Brendan can stare at the cool, running water and _breathe_ because he's carefully blank and crystal clear in that way only the dread of imminent confrontation can make a man.

He expects Steven to push him some more and he braces for it. What he doesn'texpect is the ringing _crack_ of the gun going off right near his head and there it is, his subconscious _helpfully_ supplies, the snap he's been waiting for in full, typical Steven over-doing-it.

"The _fuck!?_" he yells, gets straight to his feet like someone's shoved a lit up cattle prod into his spine.

Steven's off, though, dipping down to grab his t-shirt from the blanket and trotting through the tall grass and trees towards the sound of freaked-out teenagers. Brendan vaguely hears him shouting, "sorry guys, sorry, didn't mean to scare you," and his buzzing head clears enough for him to wish he had a fucking butterfly net or something.

He jogs to catch up, sees the kids looking their way over the sides of a shiny black, top-down convertible, one wide-dark-eyed and pretty young girl and one shit-scared, blotchy-skinned boy in a gaudy yellow cap, screwing his face up and trying out different expressions until he finds the most defiant. It takes Brendan until he's caught up in step at his boy's side to reckon he's onto Steven's game and it gets Brendan frustrated but not at Steven, more at how wound up _he _is; it's not him, he used to revel in this shit, thrill at all their chaos.

When he'd set out to kill Frank in Nashville with nothing more than his fists, it'd ended a messy, insanity-fuelled fucking horrorshow that still makes him feel edgy and weird. Fighting for survival - it doesn't sit well, puts him too out of control and reminds him too much of being helpless.

So he breathes himself calm and picks up his swagger twenty feet away from the dirt path where the two kids are parked up in one real fucking nice car.

"Just doin' a bit of hunting, didn't even realise cars were allowed down 'ere," Steven says and he's all loose demeaner and blinding-bright smile that puts pretty-girl and blotchy-boy at ease. "I just _had_ to come over, though," and then he hesitates all sweet and shy, wrings his hands a bit in his now thankfully _on _t-shirt. "Your car - "

It's just the kind of car that would have caught Brendan's attention and he gives Steven a sly look and gets something sweet in return. "Sorry about this," Brendan adds warmly, falling into their rhythm, easy as breathing, perfect symbiosis. It slots something back into place that he didn't even realise had broken loose, a cog in the machine that just needs a bit of oiling. "This one here, he's a bit of a car geek."

The boy smirks and finally speaks and when he does it's with that superior, rich-boy drag and drawl that gets Brendan's blood rushing with an easy, satisfying hum of instant dislike. "It's a Cadillac," he says nasally. "Eldorado, 1967."

It's a 1972 actually but Brendan's not gonna correct him; it's obvious it's just a toy to the kid.

"Wow," Steven parts his mouth like he's a little awestruck. It gets rich-boy smirking wider, pleased someone's admiring his merchandise. "Must 'ave cost a fortune."

It's the _perfect_ thing to say and rich-boy's hauling himself up and over the driver door and into the grass to better brag, a good, lanky few inches taller than Steven and enthusiastically running his giant hands over the border of the windshield. All Brendan can think is that he looks like a twat in his green polo shirt with the collar turned up and his oversized A. Lange & Sohne watch that Brendan only recognises 'cause Steven once stole him one much nicer but similar. It probably costs more than the car. "My parents bought it from a real specialist dealer at our country club. Do you even know how hard it is to get your hands on one of these, anymore?" Steven shakes his head. "You've gotta have pretty good connections. It's not just about money, you have to know _people._"

The kid looks over his shoulder at his girlfriend, or, at least, the girl he's trying to fuck, and she startles like that's her cue to nod and look adoring before chiming in, "Ollie's family's got tons of both."

The kid, _Oliver,_ smirks some more. "You couldn't just walk into a dealership and buy one, y'know?"

"Sounds glamorous, country clubs and that," Steven says inquisitively. "Different from back home, innit, Bren?"

Brendan hums and the girl speaks up again, "where are you guys from?"

"Britain but he's Irish."

"I love your accents - "

"Maddie!" Oliver snaps, twists an ugly look at her that gets her narrowing her eyes and, grudgingly, shutting up. "I hear Britain's all poverty these days, anyway."

Brendan scoffs a laugh he nearly chokes on, has to smack his fist into his chest to dislodge the spit he inhaled. Oliver's dead serious, severe, expectant look on his face and Steven's apparently waiting for Brendan to handle this one, lip bit and eyes sparkling.

"Yeah, thats uh - that's Britain," he replies with an earnest nod. "It's like Oli - " Shit. There's a laugh trying to burst through his lungs like fucking Alien. "Oliver. Y'know - the musical, _please sir can I have some more_. All those orphans, it's terrible."

"It's why they all wanna live in America, Maddie," Oliver preens with smug certainty and he clearly hasn't found _Oliver _funny in the slightest. "Probably why these guys are here, right?"

"Yeah, we just couldn't stand anymore orphans, could we, Bren?" Steven asks quickly with one raised eyebrow and an obvious quirk to the corner of his mouth.

"Well, that and the weather."

"And the people."

"Oh, yeah, British people are awful. All alcoholics and thugs, ain't that right, Steven?"

Oliver's watching their back and forth with a slack, irritated expression but Brendan sees Maddie out the corner of his eye. Her head's tipped down and she's frowning, murmuring _Steven_ then _Bren _and her eyes start to flick here and there like she's figuring out a puzzle.

Brendan elbows Steven roughly, quickly, jerks his head and Steven inhales a harsh breath through his nose.

"Don't forget the nice cars, _Brendan_," and Oliver's fast back in the game with his nod and smirk but the girl _knows_. "It's obviously our lucky day, innit, Ollie," Steven says good-naturedly and pats the kid on the shoulder. Brendan presses close to Steven and gets his fingers around the gun down the back of his jeans before Steven's got one hand gripped white-knuckle tight around Oliver'sarm and a knife pressed up against his windpipe.

Brendan turns the gun on the girl before she gets out a scream and it crawls back up inside her body with a low, grating choke.

"What the - "

"Shut up," Steven says sharply and Oliver does, what choice does he have? The smug's vanished as quick as it took the knife to appear and underneath it all he's just a scared kid talking a big game.

Brendan fingers the trigger, gestures to Maddie and demands, "out the car, driver's side," and Steven drags Oliver away from the door enough for her to shift over and climb out. Her lips are pressed tight together, she's blinking fast.

"My family has money - "

"So you keep sayin'," Steven half laughs.

"We've got money, kid. Certainly ain't after yours," Brendan drawls, bored, as he pulls the girl away from the car and spins, throws her out towards the trees behind them. She's shaking, now, arms wrapping around her body like she's trying to hide herself. "Ain't after that either, sweetheart; you ain't my type. Now, phones on the ground, quick." The girl's quick to obey but Oliver's trying to get a glimpse of the knife against his throat and he can't seem to do more than that. Brendan raises his voice, impatient and every word very clear; he's already about 100% done with these idiots. "_If you don't put your phone on the ground I am going to shoot. You. In. The. Head._"

It gets him moving, quick and clumsy into his pocket and then Steven says softly, "right, walk, come on, both of you," before pushing Oliver towards the woods.

They always go; another pure human instinct, to survive those scant, pointless three minutes longer even though the outcome is exactly the same. Isn't gonna make 'em any less dead when the time comes. Still. Brendan's not itchy anymore, he's more focused, less jittery. His blood runs smooth, swelling up slow with the tanging adrenaline rush of promise like a finely tuned musical instrument, one piece of a confident orchestra. It's relative - _relative _because everything here is relative - calm after the past weeks of slap bass and off-key pianos jarring away inside his skull like jazz fusion and bad night after bad night on the moonshine him and Pete used to make when they were sixteen in his the cellar of his dad's pub.

Relentless hangover from fucking hell that to this day has him keeping away from clear liqueur.

But they go and Steven presses the knife against Oliver's back, one hand at the scruff of his neck, tosses Brendan a sweet and private little smile and Brendan's mind's all pine smell and sunshine and rust-iron splash of death.

After minutes the girl asks in a shaking voice, "how much further?" but what she means is, what are you going to do to us? even though deep down, denial's the only thing keeping her walking so he'd better be damn sure he won't have to carry her when he shatters it; thanks to Steven he can kneed dough with Delia Smith and get a gold star when he feels like it but there's no such rulebook for removing blood stains from his jeans.

They're a ways off the dirt road, at least two miles off the tarmac one, nice and enclosed in thick bushes, so he slants Steven a look and gets a matching one in return.

_Crack._

"_Maddie!_"

She goes down with an elegant grace that's frankly beautiful, black hair shiny and fanned around her head and shoulders like a dark halo. He vaguely hears Steven struggling with a frantic Oliver and when he turns to aid, Steven's tripped him to his knees, gives him one brutal kick to the diaphragm that sends him lurching forward into horrible, wheezing spasms.

Brendan watches Steven light up like a beacon out on a foggy shore. Brendan could pinpoint his exact location within a thousand miles just from the familiar energy rolling off him in waves. It's like some cleansing blast, balled up organs untangling and coagulated blood free-flowing again. Oliver rich-boy on the ground like a frightened animal and Steven standing over him with a _that _knife, the knife that cut Brendan free, in his hand.

All of a sudden he wants to steal the day, gather it close and wring it for all it's worth.

"Hey," he barks out. Oliver shakes his head and Steven grabs him by the scruff of his neck, forces him up, eyes on Brendan. "Where's your wallet?"

"Wh - what?"

Steven's looking at him curiously but he stays silent and patient. "Wallet? The thing you put money and credit cards in? Come on, Oliver, I'd have thought your wallet would've been your showcase."

"You said - " Oliver starts but thinks better of it. "B - back pocket. Is that i- it? I can give you anything, please, _please_ just let me go - "

"Steven," Brendan says softly, watches him bend down and rummage in Oliver's pockets.

He comes up with the thick, black leather wallet and tosses it to Brendan. He opens it to half spilling out hundred dollar bills and platinum cards and one single photograph of the kid, younger than he kneels now, with two people Brendan assumes are his parents and holding a little girl close, probably a little sister. It's still a bitter thing in Brendan's memory but it's hazy, nothing corporeal enough to take hold and drag him under, not when he finds what he's looking for and fucking _then some _and peers up into Steven's perfectly eager face.

"Oliver Melville?"

The kid's eyes go wide.

Brendan wraps up the wallet and slides it into his back pocket and can't help a dark smile tugging at the corner of his mouth, anticipation of what comes next. Oliver's shaking and breathing like nails on a chalkboard but Brendan's only got eyes for his boy, now. He starts to step close and Steven tenses, tendons in his forearm flexing unconsciously where he grips Oliver tighter like he can sense exactly what Brendan's about to say - symbiosis again.

"What're'doin'noplease - "

Oliver's words melt together but Brendan doesn't answer him, just continues his forward motion until he's six feet away and breathing hard like exertion. Steven's lips press together, barely there tremble through his body. It's like sex, the buildup of pressure, Steven's pupils dilating in the thickening heat.

Brendan licks his suddenly dry lips, swallows to lubricate his throat, opens his mouth and his words come out like a hand stroking over flesh, "bleed him."

Steven exhales once, roughly, holds Oliver through his weak wailing, pulling, struggling, bends low and sinks the knife in over his jugular. Brendan watches Steven's hands turn red, fingers an elegant curl around the handle, rough, grating tug through Oliver's parting skin. He gurgles and chokes on the tide of his blood and Steven pulls back his head for Brendan to see, puts Oliver on display for Brendan like the gift he is.

Oliver sags and Steven goes down with him, hunches with his knees bracketing the folding body, a body all that's left 'cause the light's gone of of Oliver's eyes now, he's gone. Steven drops him with a half-smile and red reflected in his eyes like bloodlust when he peers up at Brendan and he's never seen anything more beautiful than when Steven kills without mercy, kills the way he does everything, unapologetic and without hesitation or second guesses.

Brendan whispers, "come here," for the second time that afternoon and this time that low-pooling heat is shared.

Steven stands smoothly, takes the several steps between them and then he's _on _Brendan like a second skin, Brendan's arms tight around his waist, pulling him up and close until he's got his legs around Brendan's waist, hands clawed into his hair, lips pressed over his own and devouring every inch of Brendan's composure.

Brendan slams him back into a thick tree trunk, grinds forwards, push of his hard dick grinding against the space he creates between Steven's thighs, Steven's rolling hips nearly forcing them back off the wood he's that desperate, that lost to it, blood and death and Brendan, and he's so fucking close already, knows they're gonna come undone right here out in the open. He ruts against Steven roughly, hard cracks back into the solid surface that must be hurting his back, must be pulling on the still-sore muscles but he just doesn't care, just moans into Brendan's mouth while he sucks obscenely on his tongue, Oliver Melville's corpse blank eyed and vacant somewhere on the ground nearby.

"D'you think we should bury him or we too far out for it to matter?" Brendan gasps out and Steven smirks, not exactly the time but when is it, y'know?

"We could hang him from a tree, locals might think it's a cult thing."

"Yeah, sure, that's not creepy or completely insane."

"Depends who you ask," Steven replies, rolls his head back, mouth parted, stuttering breaths as Brendan grinds against him.

"Wanna know what I think?" he asks, low and rumbling and Steven half-smiles, eyes falling half shut, and nods, _course _he wants to know what Brendan thinks. "I think you're certifiable - " He kisses Steven's bottom lip, feels him grin and open up. "I think there's not a jury in the world that wouldn't put you away for the things you've done."

"Yeah?"

"The people you've killed." Brendan kisses him again, licks inside his mouth, deep and slick. "Shit you've stolen. Lives you've destroyed. What you do to me _alone_ s'gotta be worth time."

"Tell me, Brendan, _please_."

"Kill any damn thing on God's earth for you, Steven." Steven inhales a sob, starts to shake against the seizing of his stomach muscles, ripple of pain/pleasure. "Not a fuckin' thing I wouldn't say or do for you."

"Brendan," Steven breathes against him.

"What? What d'you want, Steven? Anything."

"_You_, just you, I can't - " He's whimpering, gripping at Brendan's shoulders, pulling him close, heart pounding so fierce Brendan can feel the rattle of it through his own body and his pounding heart in return. "Just you, just you, please - "

He slides a hand around Steven's neck, fingers over his windpipe, vibration of his words and Brendan gets it, gets the things Steven can't put a voice to because he can't either; he wants Brendan and it's not, will _never _be, enough. There could be a million miles of Steven and it wouldn't be enough and he can't beg for something so huge, can't ask for something that he can't comprehend the weight of, trying to understand it like trying to imagine the size of the Universe, no scale large enough to quantify it and all Brendan can do is tell him, "yeah, I'm here, always here, Steven, never gonna be alone, never," and it's mindless words but Steven takes them, breathes, _Brendan, fuck, _and Brendan just tangles his fingers into Steven's hair and pulls to bare his throat, gets his teeth into the fragile skin there and bites down _hard. _

Steven cries out, almost a scream, cracked and high and shuddering and he's coming, Brendan can feel his hips stutter and jerk forward, can feel his legs around Brendan's body shake and tighten. He sucks on Steven's skin, tastes the prick of blood on his tongue, grinds forward a couple more times and follows him over the edge, coming in his jeans like a horny teenage boy behind the bike shed and he's half laughing, half moaning, never ceases to amaze him what they do to each other.

When he puts Steven down he collapses into a heap against the tree and Brendan flops down with him, sprawls back in the bright grass with his arms spread out while Steven complains, "you bloody bit me."

He lifts his head up for a second, sees the bright purple-red bruise over Steven's jugular and whoops a laugh, "_Christ, _looks like you've been gnawed on by a wild animal," and flops back down again, pretty damn satisfied.

"It's gonna be fun showin' that off at the country club."

"Mmm," Steven mumbles distractedly and it takes a a good twenty seconds to sink in. "Wait, wait, what?"

Brendan's ready for him, arches of the ground and fishes about in his pocket, gets his fingers around the Terri Pines Country Club membership card and the folded up leaflet - _home of Eric Bell's prized Gibson Songwriter - _ and tosses them in Steven's direction. He gets up on his elbows and watches Steven read with a slow smile curving across his lips and says slowly, "I want it, Steven."

Them's right there are the magic words and Steven lights up like a firework. He knows without a shadow of a doubt that by the end of this day, he's gonna be the shiny new owner of a piece of musical legend.

Brendan hadn't known about the guitar, he'd planned on going anyway, but _fucking hell _if Lady Luck wasn't rolling out jackpot after jackpot for them today. If Brendan was still a religious man, he might think God was trying to tell him something in the form of divine neon arrows.

"Fancy a night out?"

"It's all or nowt with you, innit?" Steven says, warmth and hunger and just plain old fucking _happy _to be alive, to be _them, _and that right there is worth the world_._ "Either you've got us locked down in an hotel room with the blinds on and the door welded shut or you're wavin' your weapon about in front of a million people and askin' for trouble."

Brendan kicks him in the ankle with the lazy sort of weight reserved for this heavy sort of heat and satisfaction. "Oi. I've never waved my _weapon _about in front of a million people, thank you very much."

Steven tuts. "Y'know what I - oh, shut up." He shuffles, groans, sweat and drying blood and spunk. "Errr, I feel disgusting."

"Well, we've gotta stop off at the hotel and get our shit together so - " he starts but Steven interrupts him with a smack to the stomach. He uses Brendan's knee to haul himself off the ground, plants his feet into the grass at his hips and bend to grip both of Brendan's wrists tightly.

"No, come on; I've got a better idea."

Steven pulls until Brendan's half upright before tearing off into the forest like some kind of fucking gazelle. He considers shouting, _what about the dead bodies? _but decides against it. Instead he stands, feels pretty disgusting himself, and heads after Steven's noise until he's close to where they started this little adventure to see Steven take a fully-clothed, leaping plunge into the deepest part of the river.

Brendan watches for half a minute, watches until Steven wades up the water flow onto the rocks to slip off his soaked t-shirt. He gets to work on his jeans and then Brendan's stripping off his sticky clothes, tossing them somewhere near the bag they brought and jumping in himself.

The water's like glass, smooth, clear, cool. The surface breaks apart and swallows him down, muffles the world until his feet dig in the soft peat at the bottom. He's weightless, weighed-in at all sides by gentle pressure, weight of the world some million miles away and insubstantial like a fading malevolent spirit. The need to breathe tugs low in his ribs and he pushes up into the lowering sunlight and warm, no longer stifling air.

Steven's like scenery, perched on a half-submerged rock with his face turned up against the sky. Brendan swims then wades close, presses in between his thighs and touches, thighs and hips and sides, then the curve of Steven smile with his fingertips. He remembers the days when Steven was untouchable, required patience and careful planning, and then suddenly he wasn't, bruises and black eyes Brendan paid for with the crippling sting of guilt and then, later, bruises and blood of his own, torn out of his body by Steven's hands because nobody deserved it more.

Now there's just one scar, small and perfectly round. Black against the gold of Steven's skin.

When Brendan presses his fingertips to it Steven hisses and tenses but he doesn't ask Brendan to stop; he knows Brendan's not gonna hurt him, he _trusts _with such a single-mindedness it leaves Brendan dizzy and breathless even now. He slips two fingers under the silver cross and brings it up to catch the low sun.

They came out here at three and he's not good enough at orienteering to be able to look into the position of the sun and tell the time by the cloud formations or what-the-fuck-ever. His perception's been skewed for ages, now, anyway; there are more important things.

"You know we've gotta ditch the Impala," he says softly like he's breaking the news Steven's got some horrible terminal disease.

"Yeah, I know."

"We'd better get moving."

"Bren, I don't want anyone else to have her." Steven's like a sulky, possessive kid and it makes Brendan chuckle and then it's like a cartoon lightbulb goes off in his head. Steven slaps him on the chest and says,"I know that look. What?"

"Baby, you're gonna love this," and he's right, course he's right, this is _his _boy, he's always right - Steven _does _love it

They dry off, change, gather up their stuff and split up and even though it makes Brendan's skin itch to be more than ten feet apart, it's only until Brendan parks up the El Dorado on a backstreet close to the hotel and walks the short distance back.

Steven's already half packed up when he gets there, every gun spread out on the bed.

Brendan loads up the Lee Enfield, solid, old, British army classic, another thing Brendan had _wanted _the second he'd seen it so _obviously_, Steven had shot up an entire store in Redstone, Pitkin County, Colorado with, ironically, a slightly less appealing rifle, just because Brendan had done a double take when they'd passed the window.

Obviously.

He loads ten rounds into the semi-automatic glock as an afterthought; it's useful in a tight spot, small enough to conceal even though Brendan tends towards the flash but he's gotta be sensible, too.

Steven's colt lays amongst the weapons and he picks it up, lovingly fingers the smooth ivory handle and pretty curves carved into the steel muzzle, loads her up to and traps Steven frontways up against the dressing table to slip it safely into the back of jeans. He murmurs, "don't forget this," against the back of Steven's neck and follows it with a lingering kiss and he means both.

He slips the rifle into the bag with spare ammo for both guns, checks the room over one last time for any traces of them and then he and Steven load up the Impala for the last time just as the sky starts to turn blood-orange burnt. They don't talk the short drive to where Brendan parked the El Dorado out of some kind of weird respect for the girl but Brendan flicks the radio to life 'cause this is the last time he's gonna get to hear it.

_~ give me absolute control, over every living soul and lie beside me, baby, that's an order._

He parks up and rubs his thumbs into the wheel's leather like he's trying to gouge permanent dents.

_~ and now the wheels of heaven stop, you feel the devil's riding crop, get ready for the future: it is murder. _

Steven helps him move the bags from one trunk to the other and they quickly take stock, Brendan slipping the bag with the rifle over his shoulder and rolling the map out over the Impala hood to check the routes.

He's got the tight, nervy sensation of mounting anticipation, excitement and something else, a dark sort of fear he loves and loathes in equal measure. It's not exactly like before the shooting but it's almost as good and he'll take it, knows he's changed in some fundamental and permanent way but that's okay, he can see it now; he's adaptive, he can evolve.

Steven turns to him, surges up on his toes and kisses Brendan like violence 'cause he's running high on adrenaline now, too, and every movement's got purpose. Brendan tears into his mouth with everything he's got, pushes _thank you _and _love you _and _don't fucking die please _into him because the words would only ruin the momentum.

"You got everything you need?" Brendan asks breathlessly and Steven nods.

"You?"

"Yeah."

"See you at the other side, yeah?"

A pulse of energy zaps through him like an electric charge and he pushes his fingers into the base of Steven's back and drags him flush, chest ragging breath against his ribs, growls low and rough, "damn right you will," and steals one last searing kiss.

He's heavy with purpose and doesn't look back when he climbs behind the wheel of the El Dorado to the shadow of the setting sun and sound of Leonard Cohen echoing in his ears. The Impala tears out of the street, because Steven's never been able to get behind the wheel of a car without driving like a complete lunatic, and Brendan follows but only 'til the turnoff; he's going in the front way.

The driveway of Terri Pines is ridiculous and he already hates this place so much he's cringing with it, long and surrounded on each side by tall, creepy stepford-uniform trees and hundreds of yards of grass. The club looms over the purple horizon like a mirage, cream brick building, high, grey pointed roof and white wood window frames and pillars, quaint but grand like an overgrown cottage.

There's a parking attendant, stocky and pushing fourty, a well trained fucker who clearly recognises the car immediately. Brendan parks up in the shadows, away from the glow spilling out the glass double doors, and he's got that first pleasure-jolt of _fuck yes_ when the guy walks over.

His badge says _hello my name is Walter _and Walter says, "you're not - " then coughs obviously and does an not-so-subtle swerve. "Can I help you sir?"

Brendan can see his hand inching up to his headset so he hits out, knocks it to the pavement and points the glock between Walter's shock-wide eyes. "Not really, Walter, sorry." Brendan whips him in the temple with the butt of his pistol and catches the body going down.

He stashes Walter behind the low wall surrounding the front drive. There's _nothing _beyond the walls but grass as far as he can see in the faded light, miles of golf courses, bowling greens and picnic areas, pretty and picturesque and fucking homogeneous but not for much longer.

There's CCTV above the doors so he's quick, edges around the wall to keep out of sight but it only gets him as far as the lit-up porch and then he slings out the rifle, clicks the safety off and tells _Reuben_ at the front desk to put his fucking hands in the air, if he touches the alarm Brendan's gonna shoot him in the fucking face.

Reuben does as he's told, comes out from behind the counter when Brendan jerks his head, all crisp white shirt and pale blue waistcoat, gangly-tall and thin but strangely graceful all the same.

He's calm and pretty steady when he asks Brendan, "is this a robbery?" and Brendan supposes he's had training for this or something, rich place like this, lobby's all expensive, plush, navy carpet and cream walls, dark, polished wood and pricey looking art.

Brendan tells him, "yeah," 'cause it's technically true - to an extent, anyway. "Take me through to the bar. Try a damn thing and I'll kill you."

They make quick progress through the lobby, the back hall and up to the wide open doorway of the bar.

Brendan counts at least thirty people sat and stood around chatting in various shades of fucking _pastel _and _beige _and enough pearls to make his Ma' turn criminal. There's some confusion to exactly _what-the-fuck _is happening when Brendan shoves Reuben to his knees in the middle of the floor but they get it pretty quickly when he points the rifle into the vague middle of Mr and Mrs matching-lemon-outfits and tells everyone to shut their noise and group over to the right side of the room.

The bar's a dark-wood semi circle against the back wall, entire space behind it just shelves upon shelves of expensive liqueur and sparkling glasses all backlit by soft, white light. The guitar's in a glass case at the very centre with a silver, engraved plaque underneath. The glass double doors he'd seen in the leaflet stand on the left wall and lead out onto the "barbecue patio" and further, the eighteen hole golf course.

He's staying well away from those doors.

Reuben, infuriatingly calm and well-trained Reuben, is telling him, "there's money in the front desk and in the registers behind the bar, a - a safe in the storage room in the umm, in the lobby, the key's on a chain in my pocket and I - I can tell you the combination," but Brendan's only pretending to pay attention to him to keep up the illusion.

It shatters when a woman screams like blue murder. Her husband grips her round the middle to hold her back but she wriggles like an eel out of his arms, crashes to the floor but scrambles back up half on all fours and makes a desperate rush for the patio doors. Her panic grates up his nerves like a nail up a chalkboard and he grips her by the hair and yanks her back with a strangled yelp.

"Calm. The. Fuck. Down," he enunciates, shakes her with the hand buried in her dark curls and shoves her back towards her husband. "Everyone get on your knees, now; I don't want a repeat of _that, _d'you hear me?"

There's a murmur of some kind of ascent and the rippling motion of a crowd obeying him, a fucking power trip enough to get him biting his lip around a grin. He can't resist it breaking through when he sees some tough guy in a powder-pink, Fred Perry polo shirt scuffling with the guy next to him and muttering, all indignant rage and offence, just the kind that Brendan loves best.

"Hey," Brendan snaps. "Buddy, you and me gonna have a problem?"

"Max - "

"_Fuck you_, get off me," he grunts, shakes off his sensible friend and peers up at Brendan through a floppy blond fringe and beady dark eyes. "Do you even know who I am?"

"Enlighten me."

"I am M_axwell Datcher, _of the Lamoure County Datchers, and _trust me, _you _fuck_, there'll be a reckoning for this."

Maxwell Datcher's got spit on his chin in his fervour to tell Brendan what's what, give him the lay of the land. Brendan drawls slowly, "I see," then, "stand up, Mr Datcher," and he does, tall and broad and superior in the set of his shoulders, the sneer of his mouth; he thinks he's somebody too valuable to put down and Brendan's always loved proving people wrong; there's less than a handful of people in the world Brendan considers too worthy for an execution.

He pulls the rifle up to brace against his chest and Datcher's face falls into shock, denial, outrage, he can't fix on one emotion or another and his mouth starts to flap, high and whining and music to Brendan's ears, "n - no, what - do you even - you'll pay for this - "

Brendan puts a bullet through Datcher with a deep, resonating _crack _and a spray of blood and bone that covers his friend and a few others close by. They titter and scream and throw themselves away and Brendan sends another shot into the ceiling to shut them up.

"Anyone else think they're too important to be here?"

Silence and shock, wide eyes and complete stillness, that rabbit-headlight instinct, like not moving makes you invisible.

He's been there, done that, thanks very much.

The ornate clock on the wall says one minute to eight and Brendan's vibrating with action, muscles tense and grip on the rifle white-knuckled, now. It's like the millennium countdown, waiting for the big bang with his heart pounding out the seconds to zero hour.

Ten - nine -

He hears the rumble-growl of a distant engine.

Eight - seven - six -

The country club regulars are shifting, _something's _happening, they can _feel_ it.

Five - four - three -

It's close, crack and bump of tires on rough, uneven ground, mounting the pavement.

Two - one -

_Smash. _

Screams and swirling clouds and eddies of dust and fine plaster, glass shattering inwards and ploughing across the room like machine gun spray, scattering over carpet and tables, bleeding bodies flung every which way to escape the Impala's battering-ram hood; it's chaos, pure and simple, and Brendan's head swims with it, heat and hysteria through his veins.

Steven flings open the driver door and he's got the colt held up in front of him already, puts a bullet through the brain of some guy who's coming at him on adrenaline survival instinct and little sense.

He tosses Brendan a bright, fucking stunning look of wild zeal and Brendan shouts over the commotion, "behind the bar."

Everything's trashed, everyone's confused. He's pretty sure some folk are dead, unconscious, laid unresponsive in shock. Some are getting to their feet, staggering and shell shocked. Brendan holds up the rifle, shoots the floor and tells them to _get the fuck back down _and Steven's hauling arse over the bar, wrapping a towel around one elbow and smashing the guitar case, dragging it out and slinging the strap over his shoulder with a pleased grin.

"Ready?" he calls over the car and the dust and Brendan grins in return.

Steven flings himself over the Impala hood and Brendan flicks open his lighter and holds it to the fuel-soaked rag Steven's stuffed in the petrol tank hole until it catches. Steven surges into him with one quick and wet kiss then Brendan grabs his wrist and pulls them frantic into the hall, through the lobby and out into the warm, honey-sweet smelling night air with pounding adrenaline that borders on painful.

They're in the El Dorado, Gibson stashed in the back, top down and tearing out down the drive, fifty yards, one hundred yards, then it _cries out, _the cracking, wailing, earth-shattering noise of an explosion and Brendan breaks harsh, skids and spins the car driver side on to catch sight of the club going up in a hail of fire and smoke against the navy sky.

"Fuck," Steven breathes behind him, ragged and catching, lungs still squeezed from the mad dash outside.

"Fuck," he agrees, mouth wide open and throat dry and heart banging, hands shaking, he can't fucking _blink _even, the sight is that beautiful, a towering inferno of red and orange and yellow rising up and up through the dark, brick sagging and crumbling like wet biscuit, roof collapsing in on itself under the heat.

Seconds, minutes, hours, _fuck knows, _pass and Brendan turns, catches Steven's eyes, sees himself reflected against a backdrop of fire and destruction in them like an unholy baptism.

He's not gonna fucking hide them away again, he's _not_. Whatever happens, whatever comes at them, Brendan's gonna handle it and if he can't, Steven will. They don't belong in the shadows, they belong _here, _under a sky lit up with flames in a flashy as all fuck car and side by side where everyone knows their names.

They belong on the open highway, even if it does lead them straight to hell.

Steven grips his wrist where Brendan grips the steering wheel and they hold on for dear life.

*/*/*

_It shouldn't be as funny as it is._

_But it is, it's fucking hilarious._

_- Suspect number one, Brendan Brady, wanted for multiple homicide, arson - _

_Their faces are all over the little corner telly in a cafe in downtown Cullman, Alabama._

_"That's two strawberry milkshakes." Jamie, by her name-tag, puts down two glasses on the counter. "That'll be umm, three fifty, umm, please,"_

_She's got attention firmly focused on Brendan's boy in something like love-at-first-sight and it takes her attention off their news spot at least but fucking still - s'not the point._

_"Can you put these in two to-go cups, sweetheart?" Brendan drawls with an edge of sharp dislike that gets her eyes widening. "We've got somewhere a little more classy to be."_

_Brendan slips one hand around Steven's hip, pulls him close and nuzzles his hair and she stares, gormless._

_- suspect number two, twenty-three year old Steven Hay, wanted for armed robbery - _

_"You wanna hurry the fuck up, darlin'? We ain't got all day."_


	8. MISSISSIPPI

Word Count ~ 6900

* * *

**MISSISSIPPI**

Brendan's a religious man of sorts.

Born and raised in the Catholic Church and it ain't easy to scour that out of yourself once it gets in real deep, no matter how much you don't believe.

His daddy used to say _good little Catholic boys obey their elders _and _open up _and Brendan used to sit in confession with the other good little Catholic boys and girls and say his ten Hail Marys and his one Our Father and contemplate the mysteries like Father Wayne told him. He'd contemplate the other little boys and girls and wonder if they, too, sinned like he did at night in the dark with his daddy.

Seamus also used to say, _queers go to Hell, boy _so it turns out Brendan might see his daddy again after all.

The Old US 84 is bumpy under the Eldorado and the horizon glows like the pit itself.

The top's down, miles of blazing, red-orange, watercolour nothing above them, Steven's honey-warm tanned arm against the door, his head thrown back against the bench seat and a smile hotter than the fucking setting sun on his face.

" - and then she said _if you didn't always end up pissed, we wouldn't keep gettin' thrown out _and I swear I promised her I'd never touch another drink again in my life." Steven laughs, lazy and low. "But Mike's just got one of those faces that makes me wanna grab straight for the bottle, y'know?"

Steven's fucking _high _is what he is, helps with the dull ache of his stomach on the most brutal days_,_ and Brendan's got hours of old road, Steven's smoke-rough, lazy words and Howlin' Wolf - _killed him for murder, first degree, judge's wife cried, let the man go free__ -_ on the tape deck for company, the canvas sky and perfect heat of another almost evening _breathing _and _alive. _Sickly smelling white curls around him, a looping touch and caress before it catches the air flow and vanishes in a whisp and he inhales it as snakes past his face, makes him feel heavier and destined to pull over in a weird, divine sort of way.

Steven drawls, all elongated and syrupy, "doin'?"

Brendan slows and parks the car by the side of the road, hundreds of yards of low bush to each side, climbing up into cloud-touching mountains he could probably put a name too if he was arsed enough to find the map.

"Felt like I should stop."

"Why?"

"Maybe I just wanted to look at you," and he does, turns his head and looks at Steven's loose sprawl and blown-wide pupils and lopsided smile turning quickly into a smirk he quite fancies the taste of.

"You're always lookin' at me."

"You're nice to look at."

"You after summat?"

"Depends. What you gonna give me?" he asks, low and half smile and Steven shifts across the cracking leather, grips the open collar of the overshirt Brendan's got on over his t-shirt and slides a leg across his lap, denim rubbing rough against denim and Brendan's hands closing in on slim hips.

Steven picks up the joint in the tray and puts it between plush lips, slips a hand down and _down _and into Brendan's pocket, tight fit and urgent pressure, and wriggles out his lighter, flicks it open and clicks it, smell of gasoline and burning that makes Brendan's mouth water when he touches it to the paper tip. He takes it between long fingers and draws it away, smoke blooming and rolling in the gap of his parted mouth, in the inches of space between them, before he inhales it sharply, holds it, then releases the thin stream.

He asks, "this what you want?" in a voice that _burns _and Brendan nods slowly, slides a palm up Steven's back between his t-shirt and his sweat dampening skin and rakes his fingers down, gets Steven's spine arching and his throat humming.

Steven shudders against him, skin flushed pink, everything washed warm with the sinking sun and decadent heat of bodies. He brings up the joint again and Brendan ducks his head to catch it but Steven pulls away in a tease, slowly shakes his head. Instead, he takes another drag, slower this time, before leaning close and nuzzling against Brendan's lips.

Brendan tilts and opens up instantly and slips their mouths together while Steven feeds him the heady smoke. The rush in his blood is like a whiskey injection, sweet and buzzing hot, licking thick and heavy through his veins, up across his scorching chest and into his synapses, and he sucks down the stream, sucks on Steven's bottom lip and pulls back to let the excess curl away and fade into a haze with the rest of his thoughts.

Steven kisses him, then, curls his tongue into Brendan's mouth like the sweet smoke, taste of it on his lips. He grinds down, fucking hard against Brendan's stomach, and he's distracted enough that Brendan pinches the joint from between his loose fingers and he hasn't even noticed until Brendan's tipping his head back and taking a drag.

"You sneaky bastard," Steven chokes and Brendan tries not to grin around a mouthful of smoke but it's too late, Steven's climbing his fucking body, rising up on his knees and hands cupping his neck and mouth wet against his trying to literally steal the breath from his lungs.

He lets Steven in, shares the smoke and spit and searing heat and friction, rough now, Steven _taking _what he wants like Brendan fucking loves. He's so damn greedyall the time, insatiable for _everything_, blood, danger, freedom, pain and dripping red skies and _everything_ that belongs to Brendan, his body, his breath, his heart, his dripping red blood and desire to give Steven everything he has to give because how could he not? Steven's worth the world and then some and Brendan will strip it down for all its worth so Steven can take his fucking pick.

He loses count of how many times he feeds smoke into Steven's willing mouth, he's blurry, fucking sizzling from the organs up and lit up like the tab end. Steven's grinding against him, hands everywhere and Brendan feels like he's grown about six new ones the way every inch of him senses nothing but_. _

He drops the tiny end and wraps his arms tight around Steven's back, presses him close, claws his fingers into Steven's sides and feels his dick, trapped, against his stomach. Every inch of his skin is tingling hyper-sensitive, enough to get his blood pumping hotter than their revving engine over sun-sticky tarmac and he works Steven's button open with one hand and presses the fingers of his other to Steven's bottom lip, watches him suck it right down without a thought and _damn _he looks good with his mouth full like that.

There's little rush, everything's steeped in a lazy sort of fluidity, rolling motion and sensation and the slide of Steven's tongue makes his dick throb. Spit gathers wet against the corner of his mouth and Brendan cups Steven's jaw, swipes his thumb through it and drags it down his chin, makes him messy and then pulls the digits loose and replaces them with his mouth while he works his slicked up fingers inside open jeans, rubs the heel of his hand over Steven's dick, under his balls and right back until he can push against his hole and coax him open.

Tight and hot, gripping muscles against his flexing fingers, Steven's mouth parting against his lips in a gasp, his nails sinking into Brendan's shoulders; he's the pretty picture of ruined innocence under the burning sky, some kind of sign like the coming fucking apocalypse, God's creature sullied by the devil himself except Brendan had no hand in tainting Steven; his boy had already been crawling with sin when he'd found his way to Brendan.

Not that anyone would take his word on that - the devil's got a forked tongue, after all.

"Come on, baby" Brendan growls against Steven's mouth, bites into his soft bottom lip. "Fuck yourself on my fingers."

Steven chokes a moan, moves his hips like he's riding Brendan's cock, grinding roll that drags sticky pre-come against Brendan's forearm and pushes his fingers deeper. He curls them forwards, towards him, gets Steven crying out and throwing back his head, long arch of his throat for Brendan's mouth to take, taste of skin and rushing pulse, life in all her glory.

The word _blessing _springs to mind and he doesn't know why. Brendan hasn't thought in terms of reward for a long time, not since he learned, first-hand, the power of punishment as a weightier incentive. There it is, though, right on his tongue, _literally_.

There's poetry in the dichotomy of that, a blessing for the world's most damned man. He's _long _past seeking atonement or salvation, doesn't believe in bad things happening to bad people, just _things _and _people,_ and Steven'd given him advocacy the day he'd picked up the knife that had murdered his father; he doesn't need a damn thing from anyone or _anything_ else, doesn't need someone to tell him what's what, and if he looks at Steven and thinks of being blessed then fuck it, he'll gladly get on his knees in worship.

Except -

- something's wrong -

- unsettling, weird tension, his hair standing up.

Steven goes stiff and Brendan thinks for a panicked second, thought muzzy through his hazy brain, that he's hurt him and pulls back sharply.

His head clears instantly with the glint of flashing silver at Steven's temple and the creak of black leather; a gloved finger on the trigger.

"Stay very still or I will put a bullet through your brain," a low, gruff voice, cold chills over his skin because the motherfucker who's expressing the sentiment sounds serious in a way few people ever sound to him. "_Steven_." Steven's eyes go wide and Brendan _feels_ the shiver pass up his boy's spine, feels it claw through where their skin joins and sizzle up his own in response. "I'd like you to _de-tangle _yourself, slowly, then step out of the car."

Brendan's throat constricts, the thought of Steven moving away from any kind of means to fucking _protect _when there's a gun - another fucking _gun -_ involved like a shock to his heart but Steven's mouth trembles and only half in fear. Now it's anger, too; now he's about to go blind and reckless with it because he turns like the flip of a coin when Brendan's hands aren't readily available and Brendan needs to get a fucking grip on him lest he end up showered in bits of skull.

"Steven, _please,_" he pleads and sees Steven's attention flutter and focus in on him. "Please just do as he says. _For me._"

It breaks through, thank _fuck._ Steven kneels and Brendan pulls his hand loose, fucking awkward situation to be staring down a barrel in, now that he comes to think of it, but it definitely could have been worse and he's pretty pissed off overall not to mention the fact he was interrupted with his hand on the appetiser_._ It's funny but not a bit fucking funny and he kind of wants to giggle - pure hysteria that he clamps down on like an iron vice.

Steven zips up and the fella with the gun opens the car door for him like a true southern gent. He's tall and broad and rough as his voice now that Brendan can see him, deep lined face, dark and greying hair swept back, thin mouth and eyes as stone-cold deadly as Brendan's ever seen in his life and _fuck, _this fucker is dangerous, he can sense, taste and _smell _it all over him. Steven climbs out, stands at least eight inches shorter than the guy.

"Hands behind your back," he demands but nobody makes demands on Brendan's boy but Brendan and he can see the strain in Steven's muscles as he fights against his ingrained need to piss off every dangerous fucker they _ever _fucking come across; there is _nothing _Steven hates more - outside of people touching, looking at or breathing near Brendan, that is - than been told what's good for him. It doesn't matter, though, because the gun's suddenly on Brendan, "hands behind your back or I will _shoot him, _boy,_" _and Steven melts like heated butter.

Big-guy ties his hands, frisks him and finds his knife and gun and tosses them into the backseat of the Eldorado and Brendan's skin crawls all the while, hands_ touching_ something that they have no right to touch, the gun was bad enough but fucking _hands _on Steven's body_, _and Brendan's in no doubt that this guy's going down no matter how much trouble it costs them - could be the king of fucking England and Brendan would gleefully start a world war over the slight.

The guy demands, "your turn, _Brady_. Out the car, no sudden moves," with so much calm confidence thatBrendan's borderline _childish _urge to shatter it pulls like a fishing hook in his gut.

"Since you obviously know who we are, I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess that your bollocks are pretty huge," Brendan cracks, can't help it and then he's instantly sorry when Steven yelps, gun pressed into his throat and dragged back up against Big-guy's chest like he weighs nothing.

"You're worth more to me alive and, unlike you, I consider murder a sin. But do _not_ think I will hesitate to put you and your boy down if you cease to be worth the effort," he states, steady and loud and fucking clear in his Southern-rough voice - this is the only warning Brendan's going to get. "I reckon the good Lord would judge it righteous in the end, anyway."

Brendan stands slowly, hands up where Big-guy can see them. He's not goading when he says, "that's all a bit fire and brimstone, isn't it?" and Big-guy takes it for the curiosity it is because he's smart in a way Brendan finds both terrifyingand grudgingly impressive.

"You think your Lord would punish me for sending a monster back to hell?"

"He ain't my Lord."

"I thought as much." A smile, as warm as the fucking ice-capped mountains at Brendan's back. "Turn around, hands behind your back."

He goes slowly, breathes a long exhale through pursed lips to try calm his stuttering heart. He faces out across the bushes, purple-tinted now as night starts to climb like spreading ink over the uneven horizon and his brain sputters and chugs for some kind of way out, some way to turn the tables but it doesn't come, not before Steven's terrified, rough and cracking like a screaming vinyl voice, "_Brendan!" _and a sharp pain across the back of his skull, fading sky - navy - black -

_I don't want - _

_What did I say?_

_Dad - _

_What did I say, son?_

_That I should be good._

_Where do good boys go, Brendan?_

_Heaven, dad._

_And bad boys?_

_Hell._

_And what happens in Hell, boy?_

_This - he thinks desperately but that isn't what he says - this is what happens in Hell._

"Hell's for the wicked, boy. D'you really think that's where you belong? Talk to me, Steven, I can _help_ you."

"Help? Sorry to say but your help's a bit backwards, mate - _aaah_!"

"But I can't help you if you won't ask, if you won't _admit _that you need it. All this pain can stop - " A rough groan. "All this fear - " Another, a gasp, a muffled cry. "No more living this life - " A stretch of silence. "You'd be safe again."

"Get fucked - ahh, _fuck - _"

Brendan can hear familiar voices, the rustle of clothes - he's pinned down, can't move but he's trying.

"B - Brendan?"

" - _nonono_ - da' - "

"Brendan, _no, _it's me, It's Ste."

"Steven?"

"Seamus is dead, Bren. It's just me, now."

Steven and how he wakes Brendan when he screams in the dark - Seamus is _dead -_

"That he is." Low and rough and cold rumble, a lined face and severe eyes. "Murdered in cold blood. Your own father, Brendan?"

"Brendan didn't kill him, I did."

"And who do your hands really belong to, Steven?"

There's hard wood under the slumped curve of his half-sprawled body, hands tightly secured around something solid at his back that feels immovable; wood, he thinks, won't so much as bend. His head's fuzzy and he's blinking, trying to clear the film across his eyes, trying to asses what the _fuck _is going on. He smells mold and dust and hears space, the echo of voices off bare walls and _wow, _oh wow.

He could fucking _laugh._

"Are you kidding me?"

He's bound to a fucking _church_ _pew. _

Their enormous captive smiles, droll like he's in on the joke. "Too much? I kinda like it. It's really a coincidence. This just happened to be the closest place to lock you two down. Well - if you believe in coincidences, that is. I'm not sure I do this time. This one's a little heavy handed for all that, huh?"

"Lock us down for what?"

The building's _old. _Littered with detritus from a collapsing roof, air dry like crumbling paper, scattered pages of old bibles he can just about make out. Deuteronomy 16:20: _follow justice and justice alone, so that you may live and possess the land the Lord your God is giving you_.

His vision pitches a bit, wobbles like he's at sea. His head throbs at the back where he got unceremoniously decked and he's trying to focus, narrow his gaze and take in the details because they're important.

There's a raised platform that spans most of the front wall of the church a few feet in front of him, three steps up to the pulpit and Steven's sat on the wood floor there, propped against the altar, hands behind his back and fastened to the brass bar at its base. His knees are bent up and his ankles bound. There's faint bruising around his eye and a slash of blood on his cheek and then blood, _more _blood, pooled and splashed over the wood and Brendan's energised like someone's plugged him in, tugging, wrenching, fucking hacking his own wrists to ruin to pry himself out of the tight plastic zip binding him; there's gouges up Steven's arms, several, deep and oozing this horrible, visceral and vivid red that _hurts _to look at and if he just could get free, Brendan would gleefully pay them back a thousand-fold.

He asks, shattered through the tinted glass of his rage and fear and sickness, "Steven, are you okay?"

"I'm fine," and there's no give away in his face except pale, so pale, but he doesn't sound fine, he sounds weak and hoarse, sticky like his voice is caught, how long've they _been _here? How long has this guy been cutting into his boy's skin like it was his to so much as touch in the first place?

"I'm gonna kill you," he thinks he might be saying.

Except -

"The police are on their way." Brendan stops struggling and goes momentarily numb 'cause that's worse, worse than pain, worse than someone torturing his boy. The guy stands to full height, from where he'd been crouched down next to Steven. "About an hour out. I've been tailing you since Monroeville, Brendan, and I just happened to spot an opportunity right out here in the middle of nowhere, Mississippi. You let your guard down."

The fucking drugs and Steven's glowing, sun-warmed body right on the side of the _fucking _road and he could scream for how stupid they've been; when he'd wanted them on display he'd been thinking less getting caught, more business as usual.

"Bounty hunter?" he asks, his voice a wreck already.

"Hired by the Melville family; didn't believe the police had it in 'em and I'm inclined to agree. They've got money to burn but - you already knew that, didn't you?"

Brendan considers him carefully, fear quelling his anger enough to think straight and he starts slowly, "if you're in this for the money," but gets a blunt smack across the face from an unforgiving, heavy fucking hand for his trouble.

"You insult me." His voice is calm, _conversational _of all things. "I wouldn't."

Brendan works his jaw, throbbing now, and that's _another_ nail in Big-guy's coffin right there. "I do apologise, wouldn't wanna insult the bloke trading bodies for cash."

"We all trade in something but money is nothing more than a pleasing by-product of what I do."

He's clear enough to get a good look at the guy, as tall as he vaguely remembers through his drug-haze, probably in his late forties but looks older, face like carved granite and eyes just as sharp, just as cold and unyielding. He's wearing a black t-shirt, lean, muscled arms with tracing paper thin skin tight over dark veins and patterned in black ink, a screaming face here, a man dying on a cross there, a naked woman paying penance at the end of a lash - Bounty Hunter trades in divine favours, an eye for a one way trip on high.

Brendan's right to be afraid.

He can destroy the apathetic, reduce the ones that live like dust back to dust, it's easy, they're all but begging for someone to put them out of their misery, but _this _guy is a consummate believer; this guy's stakes are way higher.

This fucking place isn't helping none, either. He hasn't set foot in a church for years, Steven always had this funny kind of notion that they might burst into flames if they stepped on hallowed ground or something and it had stuck with him in some weird, irrational way. His skin already itches - trust Steven to be fucking right whenever it means bad news.

Steven who's bruised and bleeding, who he's trying _not _to look at in case it pushes him over the edge and shatters his already sore and fragile nerve.

"How much are we worth, then?" Brendan asks, keep him talking, calm the fuck down, he needs his head on tight. Not only that but he's pretty curious, too; it's not often Brendan meets someone who scares him and he's half enthralled. "Come on, I'm desperate to know."

"Not as much as the lives you've taken cost but," Big-guy pauses for effect, a touch of the dramatic about him. He seems happy enough to chat so long as Brendan's not trying to escape. "My highest yet, you'll be undoubtedly happy to know."

"You know me that well, huh?"

"I've read everything on paper about you, Brendan. Steven, too."

"I hope it's not too unflattering."

"Countless deaths, including that of your own father, of Steven's step - "

Brendan rolls his eyes and cuts him off, "yeah, yeah, we know about that stuff, we were there, remember?"

"I'd call that pretty unflattering."

"You've obviously never been famous, then."

Bounty Hunter looks surprised. "You're not gonna tell me that's what this is about? Infamy?"

"Nobody wants to die a nobody."

The guy considers him and then smiles, slow and _knowing _in a way that gets Brendan's skin writhing. "No, that's not it, is it? That's not why you do it. I'm real curious, Brendan." He hunches down in front of the pew and almost right between Brendan's splayed legs, gun in his hand but clicked safe and resting against one thigh. "Why? Why the murder, why the carnage?"

It's a loaded question, one he couldn't explain if he wanted to.

_Either they pay in blood or we drown in each other's._

That's not even the half of it.

"'Cause I'm a monster, Mr Bounty Hunter."

"Interesting answer. I don't disagree but," he pauses to take a thoughtful breath. "But it seems too simple for a man like you."

"What? I'm a simple fella."

"No, you're not." The way he examines Brendan like a pinned frog in a lab makes him tense and exposed on top of everything else, brings that cornered animal cold-sweat across his skin; Brendan's a half-done puzzle and the pieces he's got left are the wrong size and shape for the holes. "And what about Steven?"

Brendan gives himself away, just like he always fucking does, eyes flicking past the guy's broad shoulder and onto Steven like a magnetic pull, dark-eyed and soft-mouthed Steven, his furious and -

- fucking _clever _boy, holy_ shit _and no pun intended_. _Steven shakes his head and communicates a silent _don't look at me you idiot_, and his bloodied arms are straining with rhythm and purpose, sawing in tiny up-down movements and Brendan looks away quickly to pull Mr Bounty Hunter's attention back onto himself.

He's bound Steven with _ropes, _the stupid fucker. He's done that thing they all do, he's underestimated Brendan's boy.

"What about Steven?"

"You've hurt a lot of people, Brendan, but I think that Steven might just be your most tragic victim, yet." It irks on a _gut _level, instinct clawing and thrashing like an animal through his insides and Bounty Hunter smiles like the crack of a punishing whip. "Your _sin _has tainted a _normal _family man, turned him from a righteous path and now he wallows in your corruption."

"My sin?" Brendan drawls, keeps the furious tremble out of his voice. "Oh, you mean my dick in him? That what you talkin' about?" Bounty Hunter's mouth curls in a sneer, the first genuine betrayal of his true emotions yet, and ain't that fucking hilarious? Arson, murder and patricide's fine but bumming is what _really _turns this huge motherfucker's stomach and Brendan's the distraction here so he thinks, _whatever, in for a penny, _and goes on and hopes it won't get him shot. "I'm only giving him what he begs me for and he _does _beg. A lot. You should hear the way he moans, the sounds I pull out of him when I fuck him real deep and hit that spot inside him, makes him _so. Fucking. Hard _for me."

"That - "

"He's so sweet when he comes, too," and Steven's good humour's back in the game because Brendan can see the ghost of a smile playing over his lips, one he's trying not to let snowball into a full on laugh, right there in his peripheral vision. "Sometimes all over my hand. Sometimes he likes to come on my face. Sometimes I take it right down my throat - "

He gets another smack, chokes on the tang of blood on his lips and turns his head to the side to spit it out but can't stop his grin.

"_That_ boy is only begging to be _saved_. He's still in there, under layers of your brainwashing and perversion, and one day you will watch as he sees you for what you really are."

Brendan's found the missing piece of his puzzle, it's shaped exactly like Brendan's boy but the guy can't see it, he's put it together all wrong. "I know I'm _good, _Mr Bounty Hunter, but are you suggesting my dick has actual magical, mind-controlling powers?"

"You know what your sin is, Brendan?" Bounty Hunter asks, heated, low tremble to his voice that's like music to Brendan's ears, seems he has little patience left for Brendan's_ - _if he does say so himself - _hilarious _quips.

Steven's knees are tucked up against his body over by the altar, movements small and focused around his bound ankles.

"I dabble in all seven but go on."

"Lust. You _lust _for every sick and diseased vice, you're a base animal with no discipline or control."

He could fucking laugh at that, fucker doesn't know the meaning of the words and he's talking to the wrong guy here, anyway. Brendan's a _pro _at control. Steven on the other hand -

"There's a difference between control and self-denial. You should try a bit of vice sometime, might _loosen _you up."

"I have no desire to sink so low or indulge in your depravity," he growls, hackles rising, Brendan's getting to him now and it's pretty damn satisfying, as satisfying as seeing Steven's ankles almost free over a broad shoulder. "Hell isn't where I'm aiming."

"I gathered. What is it you did that's so bad you gotta try and earn back your ticket up above, rounding up sinners for Judgement Day?" Bounty Hunter goes still as cold marble, eyes wide and glassy and clear rage, the purest quality, terrifying in its intensity and it looks like Brendan's hit that sore nerve dead on. "Hmm? What's _your_ sin?"

"Very presumptuous of you."

It's a very clear warning.

"Is it sloth? Nah. Spot of wrath, maybe? Definitely. I'd say avarice but - we've already established that one and you're more an entrepreneur, really. But I don't suppose anyone went to Hell for havin' a tantrum or doin' a bit of business, hmm?"

The guy collects himself quickly, tries to smirk and shrug off Brendan's assumption with forced nonchalance. "If you're tryin' to rattle me, Brady - "

"You murder someone?" Eyes flash dark and his words dry up like a fish on land. "Ahh, bingo."

"I'm warning you."

And that's probably his _last _clear warning; shame Brendan's enjoying himself so damn much now. "It was a prostitute, wasn't it? It's always a prostitute - "

"She was _not _a whore!"

It rings out around the bare church walls in an appalling, never ending echo. Something snaps and wrenches in the thickening air of shocked silence that follows and Bounty Hunter stands smoothly, steps back and holds up the gun straight into Brendan's face and even then, Brendan still can't help a soft, kind of fascinated, "okay," escaping through his lips. Watching men lose control like this has always fascinated him; he thinks there's probably something sickening about that, something real dark in his veins over it that's had over two whole decades to dirty his blood.

"I said you were worth more money alive but that doesn't mean I won't kill you," Bounty Hunter says and he's shaking, finely trembling and unbalanced, the gun wavering, _perfect._

"You know what I think it is, Mr Bounty Hunter? I think your sin is _pride," _Brendan says and lets some of his tension bleed through his words, no more teasing, he's baring teeth, using that well learned control to push something into his voice that makes this guy fucking listen good. "I think you take one look at the book cover and your judgement's set in stone. You looked at mine and Steven's police report, looked at me and Steven, and decided in a split second _exactly _who we were but, _Mr Bounty Hunter_, you made a grave error that's gonna cost you dearly."

He narrows his eyes, sneers, "oh, and what's that?"

Brendan smiles, tastes blood on his splitting lip, watches Steven rise up like an avenging angel and he whispers, low enough to get their would-be-captor focusing, "I'm not the base animal, here." Bounty Hunter frowns. "Where's your knife?"

That does it; Brendan watches all the colour drain out of Bounty Hunter's face, watches his eyes go wide in dawning horror and both his hands, gun included, fall to his pocket and waistband but it's too late, he fucking _knows _it isn't there, it's just another instinct, another fascinating and completely human reaction.

Steven moves and the guy turns like he's resigned to his fate already and then he's got fucking armfuls of Brendan's boy, Steven jumping the steps of the alter and hurling himself up onto him, legs locking around Mr Bounty Hunter's middle, one hand curled tight around the back of his neck while he brings the knife down again and again and _again _into the spattering, gushing artery under his throat. He falls back, Steven still on him, going down with him, knees against the wood floor at either side of Bounty Hunter's heaving ribs and he stabs and stabs, noise like something wild tearing from his throat with the force of it, pathetic hands trying to fight him off, scrabbling at his hips desperately until there's no more movement; fucker's down and dead and Steven's wearing his blood.

Brendan watches him in awe, something like fucking _worship, _something terrible and beautiful knelt before the alter of this crumbling, desecrated place. Steven breathes furiously and looks up through his lashes, air dripping thick with iron and blasphemy. There's that _lust, _blood and sex and so little separation between the two. Brendan's still bound but Steven doesn't care, crawls off the body and comes close and fucking climbs into Brendan's lap like a cat. He takes Brendan's face in slippery hands and kisses him, wet and deep, bleeds fear and fury into Brendan's body and he knows, he _knows, _he'd thought - for just a second -

"I thought that was it, when he knocked you out, I thought - "

"Steven, shh," Brendan murmurs against his lips, aches to touch but again, Steven's the _only_ one with the means to free him and Brendan's helpless in his hands and very fucking okay with it. "We're okay. They'll never win, I _promise_ you. You trust me, don't you?"

"Course I do."

"I trust you, too, okay? As long as we got that, they'll never take us." Steven makes a strangled sound like a creature in pain and he _is_, gashes across the skin of his arms, but that's not it, not why he hurts. He surges forward, into Brendan's body, against his lips, swallows down Brendan's words and devours them like they're everything. He grinds his hips and moans and Brendan arches into it because it's all he can do but it's not enough. "Steven, come on, like earlier, okay?" and Steven tears at the sets of buttons separating them in answer, slides two fingers into Brendan's mouth that he slicks up with his tongue like a mirror of before and _fuck - _

Steven stands, kicks off his jeans, climbs back into Brendan's lap and reaches back and fingers himself open and Brendan's dizzy on not being able to touch like it's the hottest fucking thrill. He can hardly breathe, hardly fucking see straight, too much adrenaline, the searing heat of danger and the teetering edge of the abyss still clinging to him, the goosebumps on his skin and then Steven's licked-wet palm dragging over his blood-filled cock. He's rough with it, desperate edge of pain that Brendan _needs _right now, obscene slap of spit on skin on more skin and Brendan's trying to get a handle on it but it's too good he's flying out of control.

He feels Steven shift, position himself and then he's sinking down, trembling thighs and tight muscles to set Brendan's nerves alight.

"Brendan," Steven hitches out breathlessly, fucking rides him like he asked, up and down, rubs himself into the tight press between their bodies, swallows up Brendan's dick in warmth and friction with both hands cupping his neck, pulling at his hair.

"Steven, oh, God - "

"Is he right? Are - are we goin' to Hell?"

Steven's mouth parts over his own, air and words gasped between them, "there's no s - such thing, baby."

"But what - what if there is?"

He's so fucking close he can taste it, the burning heat of it, washing everything else invisible, pointless. "Then we'll burn that to the ground, too."

Steven goes erratic, half-gone, clings to his shoulders and neck and shirt collar, presses their foreheads together and cries out, long and loud, fucks himself stuttering through his own orgasm, come streaking into the material of Brendan's t-shirt, and Brendan's not long after him, the look on Steven's face like rapture, like a fucking _blessing, _there's that word again, and maybe Brendan is still a believer but not in any God - he doesn't need them, not when he's got this.

His hips push up, shaky and jerking, until he's spent and slumping back into the unyielding wood, exact opposite of Steven's warm body as he curls close and presses soft kisses to Brendan's jaw.

His throat sticks when he tries to talk, words coming out rough and slurred, "the police are on their way, we need to move," and Steven nods, pulls back and gives him a smile, back to calm and okay, that terrifying, crippling energy spent up in the most satisfying way. "You wanna free me?" Steven laughs a breath, stands and picks up his jeans and the knife and cuts Brendan's hands loose, wrists fucking torn up pretty bad, slicked red and purple with blood and bruising. "Where are we?"

"Some old ghost lookin' town. I didn't see any people about but this church is right at the top of an hill, so - we should still be careful," Steven tells him, brushes dust off himself which is pretty hilarious considering he's soaked in blood and spunk and he smiles at Brendan's sheepishly. "We only drove about five minutes so we're not that far from the car."

Brendan stretches out his stiff limbs and goes to his boy, cups under the backs of his hands carefully and traces the gashes over his skin with his eyes. There's bad ones, three over his forearms, two higher, above the bend of his left elbow, all a few inches long and deep but not deep enough for stitches. There's shallow ones, too, dozens of them, red and inflamed, tiny little nicks designed to fucking hurt; Bounty Hunter wasn't trying to kill him. Steven's still bleeding.

Brendan pulls off his overshirt and tears into it and it's good, feels good to rip and hear the material scream. Steven attempts a token protest but Brendan grabs one wrist roughly because no, just _no._ He wraps strips of material around and around, rips and winds and ties until all of the wounds are covered thick enough not to completely soak through.

Another near miss, more blood, another gun, another person trying to hurt Steven, trying to separate them, fucking kill them or put them away for life. The walls of this church close in and he feels eight years old again, suffocating in a trap, wishing for a miracle, some divine intervention in his favour. Only one man had favoured him back then, though.

His hands are shaking on the last knot.

"Brendan," soft and sweet. "I'm fine, _we're _fine."

"I know."

It's not quite terror he feels, now, it's some unholy alchemical amalgamation of rage and possession and renunciation, the refusal of fear, the refusal to be cowed by this; it's like a twisted sense of furious thrill that even the best of the crop couldn't take them down, couldn't keep his clever boy trussed up, wasn't good enough to keep his game face on while Brendan tore him apart with his hands bound behind his back.

It's not like last time, if anything he feels _more _determined now.

"I _know_, Steven." Brendan grabs his boy's hand, laces their fingers together and drags him close to kiss him, to drink down that taste of fresh air and sunlight and miles of road and horizon. "So, in your immortal words: let's _do one._"

*/*/*

_"Very little is known about the victim, Jacob Fiori; only that he was a highly paid private investigator. Many assume he was out to bring Brady and Hay into police custody but instead, ran afoul of the sadistic pair and paid for it with his life."_

_"Here you go, frappuccino, just like you asked," Steven throws himself into the passenger side like a small tornado and hands him a plastic cup. "Told you I could run a simple errand without gettin' myself shot."_

_"Again. Gettin' yourself shot again."_

_"Whatever."_

_Steven plays with the radio dial and Brendan brings the engine to life, hums in satisfaction along with her purring and taps his fingers over the door to the twanging guitar from the speakers._

_~ rebel souls, deserters we are called, chose a gun and threw away the sun ~_

_" - Fiori, who's wife is the subject of a seven year missing persons investigation - "_

_He takes them back to the road and through Laurel but he doesn't stop, pulls off the US 84 and onto the I 59, glad for the feel of smooth tarmac under his tires and a different signpost, something new, won't become a victim of the sin that Jacob Fiori fell to._

_~ now these towns, they all know our name, six-gun sound is our claim to fame ~_

_Steven sings to the radio and the landscape blurs past and Brendan thinks about Deuteronomy. _

_Vengeance is mine, and requital, for the time when they make a false step. _

_For it is close, the day of their ruin; their doom comes at speed._


End file.
